RITUAL HUMAN SACRIFICE IN MESOAMERICA

A Conference at Dumbarton Oaks

OCTOBER I3TH AND I4TH, 1979

Elizabeth P. Benson, Organizer Elizabeth H. Boone, Editor

Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection Washington, D. C.

1984, English, Conference Proceedings edition:Ritual human sacrifice in Mesoamerica : a conference at Dumbarton Oaks, October 13th and 14th, 1979 / Elizabeth P. Benson, organizer ; Elizabeth H. Boone, editor.

Subjects

•    Indians of Mexico -- Rites and ceremonies -- Congresses.

•    Mayas -- Rites and ceremonies -- Congresses.

•    Aztecs -- Rites and ceremonies -- Congresses.

•    Human sacrifice -- Mexico -- Congresses.

•    Human sacrifice -- Central America -- Congresses.

Contents

Ritual human sacrifice in Mesoamerica: an introduction / Jacques Soustelle Human sacrifice among the Classic Maya / Linda Schele

Maya heart sacrifice: cultural perspective and surgical technique / Francis Robicsek and Donald Hales

Human sacrifice in the Books of Chilam Balam of Tizimin and Chumayel / Munro S. Edmonson

In search of the Mountain of Foam: human sacrifice in eastern Mesoamerica / S. Jeffrey K. Wilkerson

The Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan: economics and ideology / Eduardo Matos Moctezuma Memory clothing: costumes associated with Aztec human sacrifice / Patricia Rieff Anawalt Ochpaniztli in historical perspective / Betty Ann Brown

Human sacrifice in the Old World and the New: some similarities and differences / Nigel Davies

Overview: Mesoamerican human sacrifice in evolutionary perspective / Arthur Demarest.

ISBN

0884021203

Ritual Human Sacrifice in Mesoamerica: an Introduction 

JACQUES SOUSTELLE

ECOLE DES HAUTES ETUDES EN SCIENCES SOCIALES, PARIS

IN mesoamerica, human sacrifice is firmly linked to Aztec culture and has been considered one of the main features of Aztec ideology. But the late Maya of Yucatan, among whom Central Mexican influences were pervasive, also sacrificed humans, as did the indigenous people of Oaxaca, if we believe the testimony of the Mixtec codices. The question that arose, and which indeed became one of the major themes of this Dumbarton Oaks conference, however, is whether the Classic Maya of the Peten lowlands and the Usumacinta region also practiced ritual sacrifice, and if so, how widely, how often, and by which means.

The rather too idyllic image of the early Maya as “the Greeks of the New World” (although the Greeks, after all, with their refined culture, also appear as extremely warlike and not altogether innocent of human sacrifice, as Nigel Davies rightly points out) has been attacked during the last few years by such scholars as Michael Coe. In this volume, Francis Robicsek and Donald Hales quote Coe, saying that Classic Maya culture showed an “obsession with torture and sacrifice.” I wonder, however, whether such an extreme position—which is symmetrical to Morley’s and Thompson’s probably exaggerated “idyllic” views—is clearly demonstrated by Robicsek and Hales’s paper or by the very interesting paper of Linda Scheie. Both supporting and negating data are brought out by archaeology and the study of glyphic inscriptions.

Supporting evidence for Maya human sacrifice are the painted scenes on Classic period ceramics published by Persis Clarkson and Michael Coe, the sculptures of Stelae II and 14 at Piedras Negras, and, of course, the battle and judgment scenes of the Bonampak murals. To these obviously Classic elements, there may be added representations from the Postclassic Codices Dresden and Tro-Cortesianus. I would not like to put too much

emphasis on the well-known graffiti at Tikal (i.e. the death of an individual tied to a scaffold and killed by arrows), as we do not really know when, why, or by whom it was made.

Although the excision of the heart (which was to become the most frequent method of sacrifice in Central Mexico and Yucatan in Postclassic times) is shown in some cases such as the Piedras Negras stelae, other sources point instead to death by decapitation. This is no surprise for those who have read the Popol Vuh where the lords of the Underworld kill the semidivine twins by cutting off their heads.

Now let us look at the negative evidence. Given the very high number of sculpted panels, lintels, and stelae yielded by the Classic Maya cities, it seems rather surprising that no actual scene of human sacrifice is represented. If human sacrifice was “continuous and pervasive during the Classic period” (Scheie), or “widespread” among the Classic Maya (Robicsek and Hales), why is it that it does not appear in art? War scenes, yes; blood-letting and auto-sacrifice, yes; such are themes treated by Maya artists in Bonampak and Yaxchilan. War captives are represented in many places such as Piedras Negras and Tonina. It may be that those prisoners were eventually killed in ritual sacrifice; the evidence, however, is scant.

Linda Scheie’s brilliant attempt to connect sacrificial rites with what she calls na events certainly casts a new light on some aspects of the blood-letting practice, but does it prove that constant and wholesale human sacrifice was linked with those ceremonies? We cannot but feel some doubts, considering that no glyph has yet been found connected with human sacrifice by heart removal (Robicsek and Hales). Munro Edmonson writes that all references to human sacrifice in the books of Chilam Balam are “oblique and uncertain” as far as the Classic period is concerned. Another interesting point is that nowhere in the ancient Maya area has any monument been found that can be surely interpreted as a “sacrificial stone.”

One fact is perfectly clear. While the Postclassic figurative arts do emphasize the heart removal of human victims (e.g. the gold disk H of the Chichen Itza cenote), Classic art is very discreet, to say the least, about this subject.

Late Yucatec culture, on the other hand, has been obviously influenced, or rather penetrated through and through, by Central Mexican ideas and customs, as was also the case of the Guatemalan highland kingdoms. Human sacrifice became so deeply rooted in those parts of the Maya area (i.e. Yucatan, Guatemala, and Chiapas) that after the Spanish conquest sacrifice continued, more or less secretly of course, during the Colonial period (in spite of the Inquisition and of heavy penalties) and even as late as the nineteenth century. Some cases are known in which the victims were crucified¹ or were killed by excision of the heart and crucified (Tozzer 1941: 116).

Although sacrifice by heart removal was prevalent both in Central Mexico and the Maya area in the Postclassic, decapitation also took place, as, for instance, among the Aztecs and mainly in rites involving the deities of fertility and vegetation. That there was a stong link between decapitation and the ritual ball game is obvious when one considers the sculptures of the tlachtli at El Tajin, the Aparicio (Veracruz) stela, and the ball court reliefs of Chichen Itza. Decapitation rites may have originated in the Gulf area, perhaps among the Maya-related Huastec Indians, as suggested by Jeffrey Wilkerson.

As a matter of fact, the Ochpaniztli Aztec ritual, during which a woman considered as the impersonation or “image” (ixiptla) of the earth goddess was sacrificed by decapitation, had strong Huastec associations as well as fertility and sexual overtones. Owing to the fact that Aztec rites, as a rule, gathered quite a number of different elements into a single complex of ceremonies, this interpretation of Ochpaniztli does not conflict with the “historical perspective” discussed by Betty Ann Brown. There is no doubt that the sixteenth-century Aztecs were highly history-minded. It seems quite natural, therefore, that one of the many aspects of the sacrificial rites was linked with the commemoration of important events in Aztec history, in that case the well-known episode during which the Mexica sacrifice the Culhuacan ruler’s daughter (who had been renamed Toci and was therefore the impersonation of the earth goddess).

No one disagrees about the paramount importance of human sacrifice as the very center of Aztec (and late Mexican generally) cosmological and religious thought. The excavations of extraordinary interest which have been coordinated in the late 1970s by Eduardo Matos Moctezuma in Mexico City have brought to light a tremendous amount of new data. Some of the recently excavated sculptures and ceramics are aesthetically outstanding, especially the Tlaloc representations, the Olmec mask, and the serpents. Apart from these, the Templo Mayor itself and the thousands of objects found in its ruins lead to several conclusions.

Firstly, the discovery of the sanctuaries which correspond to the early reigns of the Aztec rulers (from Huitzilihuitl to Itzcoatl) shows without any doubt that (as stated by such chroniclers as Sahagún) Tlaloc and Huitzilopochtli dominated the city and state with an equal status. The importance of the statuary and other paraphernalia connected with the cult

¹The latest known case, described by Vicente Pineda (1888: 77), took place among the Chamula Indians of the Chiapas Highlands in 1868.

of Tlaloc—notably the exceptional polychrome chacmool found in situ before the entrance of the Rain God’s temple—underlines the weight that Tlaloc, his ideology, and his clergy carried in Aztec religion. As Matos points out, most of the Mexica monthly feasts were devoted to Tlaloc, to the small mountain and rain-gods, and to maize and vegetation. Agriculture remained the main resource of the Aztec people, in addition to tribute, the fruit of war.

War, of course, was Huitzilopochtli’s realm. His temple has been excavated, revealing its sacrificial stone and the steps down which dead victims were hurled to where the sculptured and painted representation of Coyolxauhqui was, so to say, waiting for them. The serpent heads and the standard bearers complete what is, in fact, the reconstitution of the myth; the pyramid is the Coatepec on which Huitzilopochtli was miraculously bom. The standard bearers are the vanquished Huitznahua; Coyolxauhqui, the dead sister who was killed and dismembered by her brother’s xiuhcoatl, lies at the foot of the mountain. The sacrificial rite, therefore, is the reactualization of the mythical event (but felt by the Mexica as their history) of Huitzilopochtli’s birth or rather rebirth,² and it had to be reenacted eternally to ensure the continuity of the sun’s, and of the world’s, very existence. Such was the meaning of the Panquetzaliztli rite, during which one of the most significant ceremonies was the descent of a paper, wood, and feather xiuhcoatl from the platform down the stairs. The victims were killed by heart excision and then hurled down the pyramid to the Coyolxauhqui stone disk. It is obvious that the sacrifice was a drama, a kind of liturgical theater.

Another conclusion may be drawn from Matos’s contribution—the widespread, imperial character of Aztec religion. Eighty percent of the offerings found in the Templo Mayor excavations come from the provinces under Aztec domination, some of them remote like the Balsas-Mezcala area in the present state of Guerrero, the Gulf Coast, and the Mixteca mountains.

Closely associated with sacrificial ceremonies in Aztec times were a number of paraphernalia, including several types of clothing such as the quemitl, worn by gods (mainly Tlaloc) or by sacrificed deity impersonators, as shown by Patricia Anawalt’s paper. Certain models of clothes like the xicolli point to outside, non-Aztec, contacts.

Human sacrifice, which to us students of Mesoamerican cultures looms as an awesome apparition—tetzauitl in Aztec—and ominously dominates

²Huitzilopochtli was the leader (shaman?) of the Aztec tribe during the migration from Aztlan and Chicomoztoc to Tula and Coatepec. He was, then, “can maceoalli, (an tlacati” (only a plebeian, only a man) according to Sahagún’s Aztec informers.

the whole Mexican landscape, nevertheless is not a purely Amerindian phenomenon. Nigel Davis reminds us that many societies in many countries have practiced it. We do not need to resort to ultra-diffusionist hypotheses to explain the worldwide presence of the offering of human victims or the theoktony which involves human “images” of the gods. A somewhat Levi-Straussian concept of the basic structures of the human mind is enough to account for that omnipresence.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Pineda, Vicente

1888 Historia de las sublevaciones.. . . y gramática de la lengua Tzel-tal. Chiapas, Mexico.

Tozzer, Alfred M.

1941 Landa’s Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan. Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology 18. Harvard University, Cambridge.

Human Sacrifice Among the Classic Maya

Maya Heart Sacrifice: Cultural Perspective and Surgical Technique 

Human Sacrifice in the Books of Chilam Balam of Tizimin and Chumayel

In Search of the Mountain of Foam: Human Sacrifice in Eastern Mesoamerica

The Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan: Economics and Ideology 

EDUARDO MATOS MOCTEZUMA

Memory Clothing: Costumes Associated with Aztec Human Sacrifice

Ochpaniztli in Historical Perspective

Overview: Mesoamerican Human Sacrifice in Evolutionary Perspective

Human Sacrifice Among the Classic Maya

LINDA SCHELE

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN

Human sacrifice, as it is recorded in ethnohistorical sources, played an important part in the lives of the Postclassic Maya; according to the pictorial records of the Classic period, it was also important earlier although it seems to have been conducted in a different manner. The San Francisco dictionary of Yucatec (1976: 730) records the following types of sacrifice:

Sacrificar: chuhuncil; chuh.

Sacrificio: chuch; chuchuncil. (Chuch is “chupar o mamar” [“to suck, to nurse”] in the Motul [317].)

Sacrifico (muy antiguo): each kup (to break or cut without blows). Sacrificio (otra): zuy kup (to cut around like circumcision). zuy tuch (around the navel ??).

Sacrificio (otra): ppeta (no recoverable description, but something abominable).

Sacrificio (otra): cuxal muc (to bury alive).

Sacrificio (otra): cucul eb (to roll down stairs: to throw down the stairs of a pyramid).

Diego de Landa (Tozzer 1941) describes several of these sacrificial methods; in addition, he describes death by arrow sacrifice in which the victim was painted blue, tied to a post, cut in the genital area, and finally killed by arrows shot by dancers. Heart excision is described under many different circumstances: the victim could be stretched across a stone altar, thrown from a height, tied to a ladder, or first decapitated. Sacrificial death was executed by beating with thorny branches, by leaps from pyramidal facades, and by voluntary (or otherwise) leaps into cenotes. Landa and Antonio de Herrera (Tozzer 1941) both describe the victims as children or adults who were either orphans or slaves or as captives taken in war. Although Landa (Tozzer 1941: 123) says that distinguished captives were killed immediately upon capture, Herrera (Tozzer 1941: 217) reports

that important captives were sought because as sacrifices they were of greater quality in service to the gods. Both Landa and Herrera report that the quantity of sacrifice was great and that war, therefore, was a constant part of Yucatec life.

According to the Popol Vuh of the Quiche, human sacrifice was introduced at Tula before the beginning of the Quiche migration. Upon arriving at Tula, the people were assaulted by terrible and cold storms which threatened their lives. Tohil, at the request of the Balam Kitze and Balam Aqab, two of the four progenitor lords of the Quiche, gave fire to warm the freezing people, but the winds extinguished it immediately. A spokesman went to Balam Kitze and Balam Aqab (who had retained their fire) to ask for another fire, and there he discovered that he and his people no longer spoke the same language as the lords (although the two lords' seemed to understand the request). A messenger from Xibalba, in turn, told the four lords that they should not give fire to the people again until recognition and a gift have been given in exchange for fire to Tohil and the other gods. The nature of the gift Tohil demands forces the people to submit to sacrifice described as suckling “on their sides And under their arms” (Edmonson 1971: 5555—5556). “And their hearts were cut out there On the side, Under the arm” (Edmonson 1971: 5560-5563).

In the earlier sections of the Popol Vuh that describe adventures of the Hero Twins, the principal means of sacrifice is by decapitation rather than heart excision. Both sets of twins, Hunhunahpu and Vuqubhunapu as well as Hunahpu, are involved in death by decapitation. The dance performed by Hunahpu and Xbalanque in the defeat of the Underworld lords includes decapitation as a part of the surgical procedure. Human (or deity) sacrifice, as described in this section of the Popol Vuh, seems to reflect more the practices of the Classic period than do either the later sections of the Popol Vuh or descriptions from the Yucatecan sources.

Heart excision is rarely portrayed in the Classic sources although it appears several times in the codices. The major representation of this method of sacrifice is found at Piedras Negras on Stelae 11 (Fig. 1) and 14, niched accession monuments. Both show a body stretched across an altar at the base of a footprinted cloth leading to the seat of the ruler. An object emerges from an incision in the chest of each victim. Several heart sacrifices are known from pottery scenes although the victims seem to he either infants or youths and the contexts are neither clearly mythological nor historical (Fig. 2). Tozzer (1941: 143, note 684) associates Landa’s description of placing hearts in bowls with the double-bowl caches found at Uaxactun. These caches, which were deposited in a plate covered by another inverted plate, contained human bones and skulls. Similar caches

Fig. 2 Heart sacrifice from Piedras Negras Stela 11 (upper left), and from Classic Maya vase painting.

are reported by Thompson (in Tozzer 1941: 143) at San Jose at Belize, and at Tikal (although no bones were reported). Just such a cache offering is shown on the Initial Series pot at Uaxactun on which it is held by the same jaguar figure that appears on Lintel 3 of Temple I at Tikal.

The most frequently recorded kind of sacrifice in Classic sources is death by decapitation. It is shown in numerous pottery scenes in contexts which seem to be mythological, and it is related to the Hero Twin cycle of the Popol Vuh. Decapitation is shown administered by both deities and men, and in one case it is self-administered. The method seems to have involved a slow, cutting procedure rather than a sharp blow to the neck; pictorial records rarely show an axe raised for the delivery of a severing stroke.

On public monuments of the Classic period, actual sacrifice is rare, and I know of decapitation scenes only on piers b and f of House D at Palenque, and in the judgment scene of Room 2 at Bonampak. However, evidence of trophy heads from decapitation sacrifice is more widely distributed, as are elements of costumes, especially of warriors (Fig. 3).

Other methods of human sacrifice are also recorded in Classic Maya art, although there are fewer examples. In one of the graffiti of Temple II at Tikal, a person tied to scaffolding is either being shot by arrows or speared by a grotesquely dressed official (Fig. 4b). This scene recalls the gruesome death by disemboweling recorded on a pot published by M. D. Coe (1973: fig. 33) The latter scene, like the first, displays a scaffolding and a grotesquely dressed official (Fig. 4a). Maya human sacrifice appears to have been a highly ceremonial affair in which prolonged death and torture were

Fig. 3 Decapitation sacrifice: (a) and (b) Palenque, Palace, House D, piers b and f; (c) detail from the Princeton pot; (c) Yaxchilan Lintel 9, detail of trophy heads in costume; (d) Bonampak, Room 2, detail of decapitated head.

features. Furthermore, recent evidence has linked the sacrifice of humans to other kinds of blood-letting recorded glyphically and pictorially on Classic monuments. Rather than surveying archaeological evidence from past studies of human sacrifice, this paper will investigate pictorial records of sacrificial scenes, the interrelationship between human sacrifice and auto-sacrifice as practiced by the nobility, and several newly identified events that record both kinds of sacrificial practice.

Perhaps the most complete record of human sacrifice and its ceremonial context can be found in the painted murals at Bonampak. Room 1 shows a dressing scene and a dance that may well be a preparation for the scene in Room 2 where individuals of Room 1 engage in a raid apparently directed at taking a number of captives. On the fourth wall of Room 2, the captives are shown undergoing some sort of judgment ritual which includes torture and at least one decapitation. Room 3 shows the culmination of these rites; a massive dance is staged on a pyramidal facade and the captives of Room 2 are thrown up (or down) the terraces to be killed. The manner of death is obscured by erosion, but since the “sacrificor” carries an axe rather than a knife, I suggest he killed by. decapitation, rather than by heart excision.

The details of the sacrificial scenes at Bonampak are intriguing, but perhaps more important, the rites shown in these paintings can now be associated with records at other sites. This association can be made through the group of figures seated on the bench throne in Rooms 1 and 3 (Fig. 5a, c). Thompson (Ruppert et al. 1951: 48) commented on the presence of a child in these sub-scenes and suggested that the sequence of events "were held to celebrate some occasion in the life of the heir to the head chief, such as a birthday or the baptismal ceremony. . . .” Thompson's suggestion seems to be correct because of glyphic data now accumulated from Palenque and Naranjo. On the Tablet of the Sun at Palenque, an event is recorded as having occurred at age six years to both Chan-Bahlum and the Early Classic ruler Kan-Xul I. This rite is recorded many times in the Group ot the Cross (Scheie n.d.), but in most of its occurrences it is written with the oc glyph (T765a or a variant), meaning in its full glyphic" version (TI03.765a:188 or to yoc le) “entering the succession.” In an alternative expression, this event is written as “pyramiding” which

directly refers to the piers of the Temple of Inscriptions where Chan-Bahlum is displayed as God K by his parents and ancestors (Fig. 5b). This display is remarkably like the display of the Bonampak child (who appears to be about six years old) from the front of a pyramid.

The Palenque event is recorded as having been of five days duration, and the iconography of the Tablet of the Sun is of war, conquest, and the underworld. Although the series of events at Bonampak could have occurred in one day, it is more likely that they occurred over a period of several days. And in fact, the lintels of the building record contemporary captures by Chaan-Muan of Bonampak and Shield-Jaguar II several days apart (Mathews n.d.). War for the capture of prisoners is a major part of the Bonampak scenes.

The glyphic records of Naranjo are not nearly as clear, but in a recent study, Robert Coffman (n.d.) has associated a series of events on Stela 22 (Fig. 6a) with the event series at Palenque and Bonampak. After the period of time 5.8.9, or 5 years 142 days after the birth of Smoking-Squirrel (the

protagonist of the monument), he is recorded as subject of an event that is recorded on many other monuments as a royal title. This title (T518) occurs as an alternative expression for accession to the throne for Pacal at Palenque (Temple of the Inscriptions, west panel, H2, Fig. 6b), but it also appears as the office of the heir-apparent on the Tablet of the Sun (II—J1, Fig. 6c). No reading has been posited for T518, but it can be said that at age five, it is taken as a title by Smoking-Squirrel at Naranjo. Coffman also points out that at fairly regular intervals thereafter (1.0.4.6, and 4.9) a series of events occur and that several of the events, especially the “flint-shield” glyph, can be associated with war contexts at other sites. Therefore, an event that occurs in the early years of children who will be future rulers can be found associated with war contexts at Bonampak, Palenque, and Naranjo. I suggest that these war events occurred specifically to take captives to be used in sacrificial rites involved in heir-designation, and further, that such sacrificial events were a regular part of Maya ritual life.

The Bonampak captive scenes can be divided into three distinct phases— the raid and capture of victims, the ritual torture and blood-letting of these captives, and their public sacrifice. Many of the scenes that have been identified as “captures” in the past now can be identified as judgment and/or capture scenes. Furthermore, at least at Piedras Negras, these judgment rituals were important enough to draw the attendance of neighboring lords and rulers. A series of lintels record a very similar set of scenes (Fig. 7). The first, Lintel 12, dated at 9.4.0.0.0, shows a Piedras Negras ruler facing three kneeling lords; a bound captive kneels behind him. The glyphs behind his head include an auxiliary verb + ti + verbal noun (Josserand et al. n.d.) in which T518, the event from Naranjo, is the verbal noun. The first of the kneeling visitors¹ is named as Knotted-eye Jaguar of Yaxchilan (Fig. 7b).

On the second lintel in this series, Lintel 2, the same kind of scene is shown without the captives and in this case the person behind the Piedras Negras ruler is a smaller version of himself. Surely this smaller figure is his heir. The first, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth (left to right) kneeling

¹The kneeling figures on che left side of Lintel 12 from Piedras Negras are shown with some kind of material bound around their wrist as is characteristic of captive figures on other monuments. A close examination of detail photographs taken of this lintel in 1977 show that the material is marked by the diagonal lines characteristic of rope, but that the knot used is t6o, normally associated with cloth surrogates on sacrificial figures. It is possible that these ropes mark the three kneeling figures as captives from other sites, but it should be noted that they appear in full regalia, not stripped like captives, and that in the two other lintels in this genre, the visiting lords are clearly not captives. The knotted rope on the wrists of the Lintel 12 lords may reflect, therefore, the nature of the sacrificial rite, rather than their status as captives.

figures are named by one of the two Bonampak Emblem Glyphs² and the second is named as an Yaxchilan ahau.

Lintel 4 (Fig. 7c), the last lintel in the series, is too badly eroded to provide much glyphic information, but again a Piedras Negras lord stands

²The glyph which I am identifying as an Emblem Glyph of Bonampak consists of a bat head, ti68 ahpo, T25 ca, and T178 la. This same glyph with a water group affix appears on Stela 1 at Bonampak in the name phrase of the father of Muan-Chaan. On Stela I it appears without the water group affix in the name phrase of the same person. It might be possible to argue that the father of Muan-Chaan was from another site, but on Stela I, the normal Bonampak Emblem Glyph precedes the Bat glyph. I think this Bat glyph must be identified with Bonampak, either as a second Emblem Glyph or as an important title.

in front of two kneeling lords (presumably foreign visitors) and two bound prisoners who are to be involved in sacrificial rites. In two of these three lintels, captives are shown, foreign lords are in attendance, and youthful persons participate or an event from the heir-designation series at Palenque and Naranjo is featured.

Many other stelae from Piedras Negras and elsewhere show bound captives kneeling at the feet of, or serving as pedestals for, rulers. There is no clear pattern of events which is connected to this kind of scene, but there are now several monuments from many different sites which link together these captive figures and scenes of auto-sacrifice in a way that may reveal

information about the nature and purpose of human sacrifice in Classic Maya society.

As in Room 2 at Bonampak, “capture” scenes on other monumental art can be divided into two categories: 1) actual capture in battle and 2) the disposition of captives in later ceremonies. Scenes of active capture are relatively rare and are found for the most part on lintels at Yaxchilan and Bonampak. The most famous of these is Lintel 8 at Yaxchilan which shows the active capture of two individuals by Bird-Jaguar and a companion. Lintels 44, 45, and 46 at Yaxchilan and Lintels 1, 2, and 3 at Bonampak all show capture scenes in which the winner is aggressively and energetically acting against the captive.

In addition to these scenes of active capture, there is an additional set of monuments on which the verbal glyph for “capture” (t5I5:25.i8i or an equivalent) is featured as the main event, as in the lintels previously discussed. However, in this second set of monuments the scene does not show active capture, but rather its aftermath in which the captor stands erect in static posture and the captive kneels near him. In most cases the ruler (captor) still wears his cotton armor and carries weapons, and frequently, as on Yaxchilan Stelae 18, 19, and 20, the captive is still attired in war regalia, although he can carry other types of objects such as fans. However, on Yaxchilan Stela 15, the captive has been stripped and appears in a costume that seems not to be associated with the dress of warriors, but rather with the rituals of sacrifice.

There is another set of monuments that exhibit the same iconography as the monuments discussed above, but that do not have “capture” as a recorded event. In many cases, these monuments record period-ending ceremonies (Bonampak Stela 3, Fig. 8a), or some other kind of event (Yaxchilan Stela II). Do these presentations of captives outside of battle contexts record sacrifice on the occasion of peaceful events, or do these monuments celebrate the military prowess of the ruler at a secondary pictorial level of information? In this type of scene the protagonist very often wears non-war clothing, and I suspect, therefore, that human sacrifice and/or blood-letting occurs on these occasions. This assumption is supported by the existence of Lintels 17 and 26 at Yaxchilan and their war-associated scenes with an iconographic program which includes auto-sacrifice.

This nonbattle type of captive scene appears to be related to monuments that show rulers standing on captives and to those that exhibit single or multiple captives without additional figures. These bound captive figures are widely distributed, but they appear to be limited to certain types of monuments. Bound captives in reclining positions are found on hiero-

Fig. 9 Examples of various “sacrificial/captive” figures.

glyphic stairways at Tonina, Tamarindito, and Dos Pilas. Captives in seated or squatting positions are found throughout the Peten, but almost always on pedestal/altar stones. Bound captives in belly-down position are particularly present at Tikal where they first appear on the Leiden plate at 8.14.0.0.0. In the Late Classic, these belly-down figures most often appear on altars, but they have now been discovered as a motif engraved on the ball in the ball game scene on the Hieroglyphic Stairs of Structure 33 at Yaxchilan. Clancy (1976) has related these belly-down captives, and other captive iconography on pedestal stones, to captive figures on the lower register of stelae by demonstrating a correspondence between the absence or presence of altars with the absence or presence of a lower register. She proposes that the lower register of this type of stela representation is nothing more than a portrayal of a ruler standing on an altar/pedestal and that these “altars” were a kind of throne designed for formal viewing of a ruler in standing position. In this case, those captive figures shown in lower registers may be equated to altars displaying bound captives in whatever position. Finally, bound captives in many different positions are found as freestanding or wall-mounted sculptures at Tonina and at Palenque, but the style and composition of these freestanding captives at both

sites is deliberately contrasted to the monuments used for dynastic records at both sites (see Figs. 9 and 10).

   As can be seen by the survey above, these captive figures appear fre-

quently in Maya art and in many different contexts. A major question that has arisen in the last several years concerns their identification as captives.

There is secure evidence that many of them are displayed as captive perhaps for the purpose of celebrating publically and politically the capture of important rival lords (or towns), but there is a growing amount of evidence that many of these figures are displayed primarily as sacrificial victims in both kinds of sacrifice—the torture and death of captives, and the auto-sacrifice through voluntary blood-letting of the Maya lords.

Proskouriakoff´s (1963: 150-152) event glyph for “capture” is now accepted both glyphically and linguistically as the “seizing of a captive.” However, associated with capture and other events is another glyph which appears to record the disposition (torture and blood-letting) of captives several days after their capture. The dearest example of this event can be found on a panel from the Yaxchilan region now in the Kimbell Art

Museum in Fort Worth, Texas (Fig. II). The scene is remarkably similar to that on Stela 12 at Piedras Negras and to the judgment scene in Room 2 at Bonampak. On all three monuments bound figures are shown on a terraced facade of a pyramid. At some intermediate level between these “captives” and the most important figure stand or kneel secondary figures who appear richly dressed and are obviously presenting or guarding the captives. The ruler or principal chief in each scene is shown in the highest or most prominent place. On the Piedras Negras and Fort Worth monuments, he is seated on the highest terrace and he alone of the figures presented appears in frontal position.

The captives in these two scenes share many characteristics of dress with captive figures in many other contexts (including scenes of active capture and the more passive aftermath). A captive figure characteristically kneels

or sits with the upper arms bound behind the back by rope or cloth (Fig. 12d) Although some captives may retain elaborate headdress and armor, in most cases they appear with the hair bound by cloth strips at the top of the ad A cloth strip is often shown pulled through the earlobes and behind the head (Fig. I2d, e). In some cases, this flexible earpiece is marked by zigzag lines and in many other by the black (crosshatched) marks of blood at appear as red spots in pottery scenes. The clothing usually consists of only loincloth and skirt, and the skirt is usually marked by either slits or pleats along the lower edge (Fig. 12c). In several cases, a folded cloth is draped over the forearm and flapped holes may be cut in the earcloth, in the clothing, or in a banner carried by the captive (Fig. 12b). In addition to the banner, this type of figure may carry a fan, pieces of cloth, and some sticklike object (Fig. 12a, b). A rope or a thick clothlike necklace may be tied around the throat. Most interestingly, lines of small circles are often shown at the edge of the mouth, on the earlobe or in front of the ear, and on the chin. These rows of dots somewhat resemble the dots dropping from the tortured hands of the Bonampak captives, but their identification is most easily made in the blood-letting scene of Yaxchilan Lintel 24, on which a kneeling woman is shown in the act of pulling a thorn-lined rope through her perforated tongue (Fig. I2e, 2). Scrolls drawn with the same lines of dots emerge from the corner of her mouth, and since such an act would inevitably result in large loss of blood, the scrolls surely represent blood. These same lines emerge from the mouth of the same woman on  Lintel 26, and although the dates of these two lintels are different, the  pictorial sequence of Lintels 24, 25, 26 seem to be designed to show three  stages in one ritual which occurred on a number of different occasions. Therefore, the blood shown on Lintel 26 may be understood as the after- math of the blood-letting act seen performed on Lintel 24. It is of interest to note that this kind of dotted line appears on captive figures in exactly those locations known to have been used for blood-letting—the ears and various parts of the face (Fig. I2e, I, 2).

Returning to the Fort Worth panel (Fig. 11), the upper text opens with the Calendar Round 5 Ix 8 Zac which can be placed at 9.17.12.13.14 because of the presence of the name phrase of Shield-Jaguar II in the reversed text on the edge of the bench throne under the main figure. The  Calendar Round contains an error in that the day Ix cannot appear with the number 8 in the haab position. Therefore, the Calendar Round is either 5 Ix 7 Zac, or it is in the Yucatec system and is 6 Men 8 Zac. However, since the half-darkened kin which marks Yucatec dating in most other Classic examples is not present in this text, I am tentatively assuming that the intended Calendar Round is 5 Ix 7* Zac. The verbal glyph appears at

A2 as chucah (T515(528)181) was captured. The name of the captive Balam-ahau (T501.130:539) not only follows the capture event at B2, but it also occurs as the first glyph in the name phrase positioned at the knee of the captive on the right, presumably the principal captive. The main text continues with two glyphs which appear to name the captor (presumably the seated lord) with two glyphs—u cab (ti .526,246) and a name glyph prefixed by T12, the male article. U cab appears in other contexts which suggest that it can function as an expression of agency, such as “by ...or “because of..." The first clause of this text can be paraphrased as “[On] 5 Ix 7* Zac [he] was captured, Balam-ahau, by Ah Chac Ma?? .”

The second clause begins with a Distance Number of three days and a second event composed of T23 (na), T130 (wa), and T181 (ah). The subject of this second event appears to be named by the last two glyphs in the text, and although the “bone” glyph (TS70:103) is prefixed by a pronominal affix (ti), suggesting that it is a possessed noun, this glyph appears to name the seated figure to the left because the same bone glyph appears as the second glyph in his name phrase to the left of his knee. Since this is the later of the two recorded events, it can be assumed that it is this event occurring three days after the capture of Balam-ahau which is pictured in the scene.

What kinds of events occur several days after the capture of important adversaries? Bonampak shows such a series of events in Rooms 2 and 3 where a judgment and torture scene and a sacrificial dance follow a raiding scene in which captives are clearly taken. Furthermore, the Fort Worth scene is very similar in composition and detail to the Bonampak scene of torture and judgment in Room 2. And the last glyph in the name phrase of the kneeling figure on the right of the Fort Worth panel is Ah kin, a known title for “priest”. The scenes on the Fort Worth panel, on Stela 12 and Lintels 12, 3, and 4 at Piedras Negras, and on many of the “capture” monuments, such as Lintel 12 at Yaxchilan, appear to record the disposition of captives or perhaps the sacrificial rites to which they were subjected. A survey of the contexts in which this event glyph occurs may enable a more precise analysis to be made.

Before commenting on additional examples of the na event T123.130:181), it should be noted that T1000i (the female head which can appear as a title or as the number one), occurs in this and other contexts as a substitute for T23. As Lounsbury (n.d.) has shown, this substitution pattern is most easily seen in Glyph F of the Supplementary Series. Na as a title is particularly appropriate to T1000 since na appears in many Maya languages as a term for “mother and/or as a female honorific, and T23, the abstract version, appears as a phonetic complement on many glyphs which represent words ending in -an, such as caan "sky”.

Fig. 13 (a) Tikal Temple I, Lintel 3, A3-B6; (b) text from Structure 5D-57 stucco frieze; (c) Temple I, Lintel 3, CI-D5; (d) frieze scene from Structure 5D-57 (drawings by W. R. Coe).

The na event (T1000a. 130:181) appears as the verb in the text on the stucco frieze of Structure 5D-57 in the Central Acropolis of Tikal (Fig. 13b, d). The scene consists of two figures: a seated captive with arms bound behind the back and a standing lord facing front and holding a cord or cloth leading to the bound wrists of the captive. Coggins (n.d.: 453) places the Calendar Round date of the na event at 9.13.3.8.11 and associates it with the second event (which appears to be war related) on Temple I, Lintel III. Her observation of these two events seems to be correct since the stucco text is introduced by a Distance Number of 13 days (Fig. 13b), the exact number of days between the two events. The Lintel 3 event includes a flint blade/shield glyph (Fig. 13d), and the subject (or object) of the verb is named as Great Jaguar-Paw of El Peru,³ a ruler first identified by Miller (1974). The na event occurred exactly thirteen

³Peter Mathews (personal communication, 1982) has informed me that lan Graham has found the remnants of the Fort Worth Stela and the Cleveland Stela, identified by Jeffrey Miller (1974) with the possible provenience of Calakmul. Graham’s new discovery has confirmed the identity of the “serpent-head” Emblem Glyph, previously thought to be Calakmul, as that of El Peru.

Fig. 14 Palenque, Palace, Northeast Court, grotesque figures: (a) text from figure 4; (b) text from figure 5.

days after some war related event involving this foreign lord, and exactly twenty-seven days before a blood-letting rite (recorded in the succeeding clause) conducted in celebration of the 13 katun anniversary of the last date on Stela 31 (Fig. 13c). The na event is found, therefore, in a sequence of events including a war-related event, the na event, and a blood sacrifice, and it accompanies a scene in which a ruler (presumably Ruler A of Tikal) holds a captive at the end of a rope.

The na event also appears as the verb on the loincloths of the inner pair of grotesque figures mounted on the substructure of House A in the Northeast Court of the Palace at Palenque (Fig. 14). These nine figures were most likely reused in this position from an earlier structure and, since they cannot be dated architecturally, the Long Count positions of the two Calendar Round dates are unsure. House A can be dated archaeologically and stylistically at 9.14.10.0.0 ± 10 tuns, but the Calendar Round dates may be earlier at 9.8.16.15.13, 9.11.9.10.13, or 9.14.2.5.13. The nine figures are minimally dressed, and although drawn with great sophistication, they appear deliberately distorted into grotesque positions. Five of the nine figures squat or kneel and the ninth, at the extreme right, is bound and has exposed and

mutilated genitals. These figures, and perhaps those across the court on He substructure of House C, are surely “captives” of some sort. The text records the same na event as occurring on two succeeding days 6 Eb 10 Uo and 7 Ben 11 Uo. In both texts the na verb occupies the first half of glyph block while the second half is filled by a knot-skull glyph t6o.126:1042a), which can appear as a glyph for “death”. Again, the exact meaning of the na event cannot be ascertained from the grotesque figures, but the glyph accompanies bound figures in humbled and shamed positions showing evidence of torture or some form of blood-letting.

The na event also appears prominently on Stela 16 at Dos Pilas and on

Aguateca Stela 2, which both appear to record the same series of events (Fig. 15). On both stelae a ruler is shown standing in a very special costume (to be discussed later); he stands on a lower register occupied by a crouching captive. Both inscriptions begin with an event occurring on the day 9.15.4.6.4 8 Kan 17 Muan, on which a shell-star event occurred (Fig. 6a). This event glyph has been associated by Kelley (1977), with periodic calendric intervals suggesting an astronomical cycle, and with Venus context and calendric cycles by Closs (1979). I do not wish to dispute the proposed associations of any astronomical cycles with this event since human acts can be stimulated by mythology and religion, but the star-shell event, especially when it is associated with Emblem Glyphs, must be some way an event of war. Peter Mathews and Berthold Riese (personal communication, 1978) first suggested the war association by observing the captive iconography associated with these events, the fact that the star often is prefixed to, or precedes, the main sign of known Emblem Glyphs, and by demonstrating that captives associated with these events can be bund in the inscriptions of the sites named by the associated Emblem Glyphs. On the two stelae under discussion, the “star-over-Seibal" event pears without a subject named and is followed on the next day by an axe vent (Fig. 16b), which should again refer to some war related act. In the Dos Pilas text (Fig. 16b), the axe event includes shield glyphs (like those in the text of Tikal Lintel 1), and the current ruler of Dos Pilas (C5-D5) is named as the subject of the axe and perhaps the star event.

The Aguateca monument records the na event as having occurred seven days after the axe event, and it is followed by a person with a jaguar name who is a lord of Seibal. F4 is a relationship glyph and F5-F8 (Fig. 16c) names the subject of the na event as “captor of Kin-Balam, Lord of Tikal or Dos Pilas).” The same name appears in the first clauses of Aguateca Stela I, and I suggest that he is the ruler of Dos Pilas named on Stela 16 as the agent of the axe event. Dos Pilas lords were titled with the Tikal Emblem Glyph and there is no known local Emblem Glyph for Dos Pilas.

The lower section of Dos Pilas Stela 16 has not been published, but Peter Mathews has supplied me with a drawing of the missing sections (Fig. 15b). The upper text concludes with a Distance Number of seven days and the date 2 Cib 4 Pax (Fig. 16c). The text continues onto a lower band below the captive where the na event (now written with T537 as a substitute for T23 and TI0001) and the name Jaguar-paw Jaguar, Lord of Seibal is written. The same name appears on the Hieroglyphic Stairway at Seibal and it is recorded immediately in front of the face of the captive on Stela 16. The person named as the patient of the na event on Aguateca Stela 2 and Dos Pilas Stela 16 was a historical lord of Seibal and the captive below the feet of the Dos Pilas lord. The na event is something done to captives by their conquerors three to seven days after their captures.

The na event is recorded in several texts at Piedras Negras, but the context there is very different from those previously described. The most familiar of these examples, Stelae 1 and 3, have received some attention in past studies, but their full context was not understood until recent work by David Stuart (personal communication, 1979). Since a detailed description of these related texts on Stelae 1, 3, 8, and the inscribed shells is in preparation by Stuart, I will only summarize his findings. The na event occurs twice in a sequenced series of events which are recorded in part on each of the several monuments. The first event in this series (recorded on Stelae 1 and 8 and on the shells) occurs 12.9.15 after the birth of Lady Ahau-Katun/Ahpo-Caan. This event (occurring on 9.12.14.10.11 9 Chuen 9 Kankin) is written with the phonetic and logographic glyphs mac. Exactly three days after this event, Ruler 2 of Piedras Negras died, and on the second and third days after the death Lady Ahau-Katun (who is recorded as the wife of Ruler 3 on the front of Stela 8) enacted the na event. The event, therefore, must represent some kind of rite conducted by a royal woman (who is the wife of the incumbent ruler) in response to the death of the former ruler. Since it must also represent some act committed against captives, it must be some general action, such as sacrifice, which could be done both to captives and by lords to themselves.

The final example of the na event occurs on the Scribe and the Orator (Fig. 17a, b) at Palenque. Both panels show kneeling captive figures with the typical program of iconography, except that these figures as well as those on the alfardas from Temple XXI (Fig. 17c, d) wear cloth binding on the upper arms instead of the rope that is seen on almost all other captive figures. They carry banners with flapped holes, and a blood-line emerges from the earlobe of the Scribe. The Scribe holds a sticklike object not unlike those held by one figure on the base of Piedras Negras Stela 12, and the Orator holds his hand in front of his mouth from which speech

lines travel to the nearby text. The surviving fragments of the west alfarda (Fig. 17d) from Temple XXI show a hand down at the thigh, holding what appears to be strips of paper. The east figure holds the same object, now darkened by cross-hatching perhaps representing blood in a hand upthrust with enough violence to throw the loincloth to the side. The na event occurs on both the Scribe and the Orator in the outer column of glyphs (Fig. 17e, f). In both cases the upper pair of glyphs are missing, but fragments from the Scribe show that these missing glyphs recorded a Calendar Round date. The second pair begins with the na verb followed by a prepositional phrase (T59 ti is the locative preposition) which contains the phonetic glyph cab “earth” (T25:501). The last two glyphs appear to contain a title and the name of a ruler of Palenque as the last glyph— Chac-Zutz' on the Scribe and Chaacal (?) on the Orator. The internal text on the Scribe is not understood, but on the Orator the last four glyphs name Chaacal by title and personal name and the verbal phrase (ai— bi) will become important in later comment.

Baudez and Mathews (1979) recently reasserted the identification of the four figures of the Scribe, Orator, and Temple XXI as captive figures contrary to suggestions by Benson (1976) and Scheie (1979) that they represent rulers undergoing a blood-letting rite. The na event favors none of these interpretations over another since it has been shown to be a rite done to both captives and to royal women after the death of rulers. However, since no recognizable name appears on the four panels at Palenque other than those of known rulers, and since these names appear in the syntactic position of subject, I suggest that Chaacal and Chac-Zutz' must be identified as the protagonists of the monument and as the figures portrayed. If this assumption is correct, both lords appear in the iconographic program associated with captive figures, but the ropes are now replaced by cloth as a symbol of degradation, and a proposed reading for the na event should reflect this posture of deliberate degradation.

The fusion of captive and auto-sacrifice iconography is not limited to the four Palenque panels described above. In the two blood-letting lintel series from Yaxchilan (Lintels 15, 16, 17 and 24, 25, 26), a special costume is worn by the participants (Fig. 18d-f). On Lintels 17 and 24, the women who undergo tongue mutilation wear a Teotihuacanlike headdress consisting of a tasseled turban, a crown of short-cut feathers, a “Mexican year sign,” and a pseudo-Tlaloc motif. The same series of motifs reappears on Lintel 25 (Fig. 18a), but now they mark the creatures who emerge from the mouths of the vision serpent. The pseudo-Tlaloc is worn as a mask on the young warrior above and appears as the main head below. The “Mexican year sign” is now bound by knots to the front of a balloon-shaped

headdress made of jaguar fur on which fuzzy hairs are emphasized as a motif. The chopped feathers are behind the year sign.

This jaguar-Tlaloc headdress is exactly the costume worn by the rulers on Aguateca Stela 2 and Dos Pilas Stela 16 (Fig. 18b, c) except that the costume is full-bodied. Again the pseudo-Tlaloc appears as a face mask, and the fuzzy jaguar pelt appears on the exposed legs above the jaguar feet. Each figure carries a spear, shield, and incense bag. The capes have unusual pointed motifs attached—a bird (owl?) hangs from the neck, and a pseudo-Tlaloc reappears on the apron. At Yaxchilan, this costume appears in a context that clearly indicates auto-sacrifice, although these sacrificial rites are associated with warrior iconography (Lintels 16 and 26). At Dos Pilas, the context is clearly war and captive sacrifice.⁴

One of the verbal phrases for auto-sacrifice can be seen on Lintel 24 of Yaxchilan (Fig. I9a-c), already discussed as an example of a tongue mutilation in which the jaguar-Tlaloc iconography appears. The verb consists of a general verb (TI.757), which functions in this context as an auxiliary verb in a kind of construction now documented in modern Chol and other languages. TI.757 is followed by a phrase which contains the particle ti (T59) and a verbal noun (T712) which now can be identified as an obsidian blood-letter. In the blood-letting bowls of Lintels 13 and 14, it appears as a substitution for the more frequent stingray spine (Fig. I9d-f). The word for obsidian, tah, appears in a great many Maya languages as the word for lancet (ta or its cognates), and tok the word for “flint” in the Yucatecan languages, occurs as the word “bleed” in many of the Maya languages. The verbal phrase on Lintel 24 is, therefore, an auxiliary verb construction which means “to let blood” as is shown in the scene.

However, this same verbal expression for “to let blood” also occurs as a metaphor for the relationship between child and parent and as the verbal expression in contexts which clearly refer to captive sacrifice. Tikal is especially noted for its representation of captives who appear in seated or

Since this paper was written, I have recognized the Tlaloc-year-sign complex on many other monuments from the Classic period. The most prominent is Piedras Negras Stela 9 on which the ruler wears the balloonlike headdress with a Tlaloc and year-sign motif mounted above. He carries the rectangular shield characteristic of the Dos Pilas and Aguateca monuments which also appears on the sides of Stela 3 1 at Tikal. In addition to carrying this special shield, one of the two flanking figures wears a mosaic mask, and both carry a spear-thrower. If this headdress and spear-thrower are added to the Tlaloc-year-sign complex, then the following monuments can be added to those participating in this sacrificial complex: Cancuen Stela 2; Bonampak Stela 3; Copan Stela 6; Yaxchilan Lintel 41; Tikal Lintel 2, Temple I; Piedras Negras Stelae 7, 8, 26, 31, 35; Jonuta Fragment in the Houston Museum. Finally, the Tlaloc motif appears on the lower band of the huipil worn by the woman on the left on Bonampak Stela 2, a blood-letting monument.

belly-down positions on pedestals and stelae. Altar 10, for instance, shows four seated captives bound to ropes encircling the side of the altar. Mat motifs are displayed between the four figures. The side of Altar 7 uses the mat motif in the same compositional arrangement, but the blood-letting bowls seen on the lintels of Yaxchilan are interspersed between the mat element. The Tikal bowls are filled with paper and a personified eccentric flint. The substitution of regalia related to blood-letting rites for the bound captive motif would seem to indicate that the two sets of iconography are interrelated.

The bound captive on Column Altar 1 (Fig. I9g) is accompanied by a text that includes the auxiliary verb + ti + lancet phrase already described as the event glyph on Yaxchilan Lintel 24. Therefore, an altar which clearly shows captive iconography displays a verbal phrase which is known to refer to the auto-sacrificial rite of tongue mutilation.

The same verbal phrase is found associated with captive iconography on Naranjo Stela 22, a monument previously discussed as recording war-associated events in the context of possible heir-designation events. The front of the stela shows a ruler, “Smoking-Squirrel,” seated on a zoomorphic monster which is perhaps meant to be understood as a pedestal throne. He holds a bicephalic serpent bar and wears a headdress that combines the features of God K and GI of the Palenque Triad. The text which accompanies him names the lahuntun 9.13.10.0.0 7 Ahau 3 Cumku and uses TI.757 as a general verb stating something like “he was . . .’’or this is Smoking-Squirrel, Sky-GI, Lord of Naranjo.”

Below and facing the ruler is a secondary figure sitting partially on the muzzle of the monster. He holds his hands toward Smoking-Squirrel, and his wrists are bound with cloth. The text referring to this figure is located inmediately above his head. The glyphs are somewhat eroded, but the first glyph is the auxiliary verb, the second is ti + the obsidian lancet of the blood-letting event phrase discussed above. The name of the figure to which this event occurred is recorded by the last glyph in the text— Kan-Eccentric Flint (T281:23.529). The same glyph occurs as the subject of a verb on the rear of Stela 22. This event on 9.13,6.10.4 6 Kan 15 Zec is followed by the Eccentric-Flint name, by u cab (the “agency” expression), and by “Smoking-Squirrel”; in order words, on this date Eccentric-Flint was subjected to some action by Smoking-Squirrel. Since he is shown in captive regalia on the front of the stela and in subordinated position to Smoking-Squirrel, and since the event associated with his picture is blood-letting, it seems that Eccentric-Flint was subjected to sacrificial blood-letting, and perhaps killed by Smoking-Squirrel.

Stela 18 at Yaxchilan also associates a verbal phrase for blood-letting with captive contexts. The scene shows Shield-Jaguar in battle regalia

standing over a kneeling, bound captive who still wears the same headdress seen on the visiting dignitaries on the Piedras Negras captive lintels. The text opens (Fig. 20) with a Yucatecan style Calendar Round now marked by the half-darkened kin at ai. The date (9.14.15.17. II) 3 Eb 14 Mol is followed by the “capture” verb and the name phrase of the captive (Chuen), and a bat title found in the name phrase of rulers at Bonampak and the visitors on Lintel 3 at Piedras Negras. The Chuen name phrase also appears above the face of the captive figure. The agent of the capture event on Stela 18 is deleted and Chuen’s name phrase is followed by a second verb (Fig. 20b) which includes at A9 a phonetic substitution (ti.501:103) for the TI.757 auxiliary verb (Scheie n.d., and Josserand et al. n.d.); at AI0 by the locative (in the form of T89 tu, a contraction of ti and u), and the obsidian lancet (T712); and, at aii, by ti + and akbal glyph. The remaining glyphs in this clause name the agent of both the capture and the blood-letting as Shield-Jaguar. The personal name of the Yaxchilan ruler is not present, but the skygod title phrase and other title glyphs in the phrase occur in Shield-Jaguar’s name on other monuments and he is named as the protagonist of this stela in the last two columns of the text. Stela 18, therefore, records a capture event followed on the same day by a blood-letting event (presumably resulting in the eventual death of the captive). Shield-Jaguar is named as the agent of both events.

Nearly the exact event expression (verb + ti obsidian lancet + ti akbal) occurs as the verbal expression on Lintel 3 of Temple I at Tikal (Fig. 20c). Ruler A is the agent of the Tikal event, which occurred on the day of the 13 katun anniversary of the last date on Stela 31 and twenty-seven days after the capture event from Structure 5D-57 previously discussed. The Tikal event phrase, however, differs from the Yaxchilan phrase in that the auxiliary verb is replaced by the “fish-in-hand” glyph which records the bloodletting or resulting vision event on Yaxchilan Lintels 13, 14, 15, and 25. Since the Tikal event shares both the “fish-in-hand” and the obsidian lancet glyphs with other known blood-letting expressions, and since this event took place on such an important ancestral anniversary, it seems certain that Ruler A conducted one of the two types of sacrificial rites (captive or auto-sacrifice) in order to celebrate the anniversary. I believe that this event was, in fact, the culmination of a series of events, including the war-related event on 9.13.3.7.18 12 Etz'nab 11 Ch'en (Lintel 3, B2-b6), the na event involving a captive 13 days later on 9.13.3.8.11 11 Chuen 4 Yax, and personal blood-letting twenty-seven days later on 9.13.3.9.18 12 Etz'nab 11 Zac, the day of the anniversary. It is interesting to note that these three events took place within a period of exactly 2 uinals or forty days.

Finally, the verbal phrase on the Scribe from Palenque (Fig. 2od) seems to be related to the blood-letting phrases from Yaxchilan and Tikal. The phrase begins with the phonetic version (TI:501:314/T5IIvar) of the auxiliary verb, followed by the obsidian blood-letter and an akbal glyph. As previously discussed, I believe that the Scribe and Orator represent Palenque rulers who are undergoing a blood-letting rite because only their names appear on these panels. When the panels represent captives they are not named, and some of the expected symbols of captives have been replaced by surrogate materials. Also, the upper arms are bound by cloth (a sacred material) rather than by rope.

It is evident from previous discussion that the rituals of captive and personal sacrifice through blood-letting are deeply related on an iconographic and epigraphic level. Rulers are shown in the diagnostic dress of captives. The na event can refer to events taking place to captives several days after their capture or to rites held several days after the death of rulers in which the actor is a royal woman and wife of the incumbent ruler. The fish-in-hand and auxiliary verb + obsidian lancet phrases can appear as the tongue sacrifice and vision events, as a blood-letting event on a 13 katun anniversary, and as a blood-letting event on the day of an important capture. Events are shown or recorded in sequences such as the display of a child (heir-designation), a raid, the torture of captives (blood-letting), the sacrifice by decapitation of captives which is accompanied by personal tongue mutilation by the ruler (Bonampak murals). Other sequences are a war event, a na event, and the personal blood-letting of a ruler (Tikal); the death of a ruler and a na event by a royal woman (Piedras Negras); and a tongue sacrifice by a royal woman, her resulting vision and ancestral recall, and war and captive events (Yaxchilan). It seems that the two types of sacrifice are deeply related and that many of the “captive” figures are not presented to record the political or military prowess of Maya lords, but rather they are shown as sacrificial victims, perhaps to emphasize the religious zeal and effectiveness of those lords. The “captive” iconography associated with belly-down and bound figures does not mark captives so much as it marks sacrificial victims.

The na event previously identified is an important event in this sequence of rituals involving personal and human sacrifice during the Classic period. On the Fort Worth panel, it records a pictured event very similar to Bonampak’s judgment scene in Room 2 which occurs three days after the capture of the principal captive. At Tikal, it accompanies the display of a bound captive by Ruler A thirteen days after a war-related event and twenty-seven days before the personal blood-letting of Ruler A in celebration of a 13 katun anniversary. At Aguateca, it occurs seven or eight days after war events that mark specifically named captives from other sites, who appear in the inscriptions of that other site. At Piedras Negras, two na events are enacted by the wife of the incumbent ruler two and three days after the death of the previous ruler. At Palenque, the specific context of the na event is not known, but on the Scribe and the Orator, contemporary Palencano rulers are named as the agents of the event where no other name (i.e., that of a prisoner) appears. However, the figures shown are dressed in captive attire, except that the rope usually binding the upper arms now is replaced by cloth surrogate. If these two figures and those on the two alfardas from Temple XXI are portraits of rulers in the act of personal sacrifice through blood-letting, the na event glyph must have a “reading” which involves all of the contexts above and which allows for the humiliation of a ruler as well as captives who are involved in this kind of rite.

The na event glyph is composed of three graphemes: T23 (or its equivalents, tioooi or T537), T130, and ti8i (or its equivalent ti8o). All of these graphemes have proposed phonetic values of which the value of ti8i is the most widely accepted; it is a verbal affix with the phonetic value of -ah. T130 appears in the cacau, muan, tzec (cazeu), and ahau glyphs where it wants to be read as the phoneme --wa. T130 can be most clearly seen as wa in its appearances in Emblem Glyphs and ahau titles because it is attached to both glyphs as a phonetic complement to insure a reading of ahau by repeating the last consonant or to alter the reading of ti68 (ahpo or ah pop) into the equivalent title ahau.

T23 appears consistently as a phonetic complement on glyphs representing words ending in -an, such as kan (T28i:23) or caan (7561:23). T23 and TI000I freely interchange as phonetic complements on Glyph F, and T537 appears not only as a substitute for T23 and TI000I, but on Dresden 33c it appears as the glyph for “house” in a text accompanying a scene showing God B seated in a house. Na is a word for “house” in Yucatec.

Together the three graphemes seem to form a phonetic glyph meant to be read as na.wa:ah (T23.130.181) or nawah. Since ti 81 is known to function as a verbal suffix, it can be assumed that the root in this verbal phrase is either na w or na and that T130 wa functions either to record the final consonant of a C V C root or to record a verbal affix in addition to the -ah. Using these possible forms of the underlying verbal root (naw and na), I have looked in all of the Maya languages for a root which might fit the contexts described for the na event. Naw appears to be a very rare CVC root in Maya languages and I was able to find glosses for it only in Yucatec as follows:

Motul (668):

nauac nac cosa que se cae como borracho.

náual andarse caiendo de flaqueza o como el borracho.

nauan cosa que esta caido como un arbol o un enfermo.

San Francisco (255): naual antiguos bailes de mujeres. naual; nautal andarse cayendo de flaqueza.

“To walk falling like a drunk” or an “old dance of women” might be posited as a reflection of the weakened condition for those have undergone a blood-letting rite, but these glosses simply do not seem important enough nor widespread enough to propose them as a reading for the na event. The root na, on the other hand, seems to fit very closely the entire iconographic complex associated with blood-letting, and captive sacrifice. Na? is the proto-Maya root for “to know” and “to remember” and its many derived forms, or homophonous forms which could have been written with the same grapheme,⁵ are interesting. These forms are as follows: Motul (665):

nah merecer [to deserve, merit, owe, be indebted for; to do anything deserving of reward or reproof).⁶

nah convenir [to agree, coincide; to cohere, fit, harmonize, belong to, correspond; to convene, assemble], ser menester [need, necessity, want, wanting], ser necessario o porvechoso. nahal ganar.

nahalba ser afrentado [to be ashamed, insulted] o confundido delante de otros [confounded, confused, ashamed, humbled in front of others].

nahba afrentar [affront, insult, to be affronted, shamed].

avergonzar [to shame, abash, cover with confusion, make ashamed, to feel shame, blush for, be ashamed]. nahel cosa miserable, pobre, desdechada de quien se ha de tener lastima].

San Francisco (251):

nah; nahal ser digno [to be meritorious, worthy, deserving; suitable, fitting, appropriate],

It is not proposed in this paper that nah and na? were derived from the same proto-Maya roots. It is, however, proposed that both of these terms would have been written by the same grapheme since the writing system does not seem to have recorded the difference between 0, h, and j in final position. This property of the writing system can most easily be proven by the substitution of the vulture head based on ta?hol (“excrement head”) for the locative ti (T59) which does not have a glottal stop, and the free phonetic interchange of the locative ta (TI02) for the logographic glyph for a “pine torch” tah. These substitutions show that tu?, ta, and tah could all be represented phonetically by the same sign, although when necessary the final consonant ? o h could be written by the addition of a final sign (reduplication of the vowel to reflect the echo vowel after a glottal stop, and ti8i ah to record an h).

Ali translations of Spanish glosses are based on Cassell’s Spanish Dictionary, 1968, Funk and Wagnalls, New York.

merecer, merecimiento [merit, worth], nahal, nahaltah, nahinah merecer, ser digno, ganacia, merecimiento,

conseguir, ganar.

nahel desdichado, lastimable, miserable.

Chol (Aulie and Aulie 1978: 84):

na'tan pensar, comprender, recorder.

ña'tibal inteligensia, comprehension.

ña'tintel pensar.

(Attanasi n.d.: 297):

na'-tan understand.

na' mental function

Tzotzil (Laughlin 1975: 246):

na’ know, remember, miss, calculate, realize, regret.

na'el wisdom or sentiment for absent or dead person.

na'obil inheritance, possession left by deceased, grief for deceased. Seventeenth century Tzotzil (Laughlin n.d.):

na' guess right, know, recall, remember, resolve.

na'el knowledge, fame, longing, respect.

na'obil commemoration, indication or premise (for making guess), memory.

na'obil k'in martyrology.

na'oj remembered object.

na'le mock.

na'levan mockery.

Fox (n.d.: 195) glosses na' as a term for “know”, “feel” and “remember” in Quiche, Cakchiquel, Pocoman, Teco, Mam, Tojolabal, and Chorti, in addition to the languages listed in the glosses above. He suggests that the intransitive form was na’ and that ná'-t was the derived transitive form.

In light of the iconography of sacrifice, it is interesting to note that in Yucatec nah means “to deserve and merit” and “to do anything deserving of reward” (a fitting description of personal blood-letting), but with different suffixes it means “to insult, to shame, abash, make ashamed” (a fitting description of what was done to captives). In Tzotzil, na' is “know, recall, remember”; it is also the root for words not only with the meaning of sentiment and memory of the dead, but of “commemoration” and “martyrology” (the history of martyrs which may be Christian in function, but which is also certainly related to human sacrifice in Classic and Postclassic Maya rituals). The rites of auto-sacrifice during the Classic period were certainly involved heavily in commemoration rituals for the ancestral dead, and it is possible that some part of human sacrifice was motivated by ancestral recall. The na event at Tikal took place twenty-

seven days before an ancestral anniversary, and the figures emerging from the vision serpents at Yaxchilan are thought to represent recalled ancestors. Na can mean, therefore, either the merit gained by blood-letting rites and in turn the insulting and shaming of captives, or the self-humiliation proposed for the blood-letting scenes of the Scribe and Orator at Palenque. And in addition, it can mean the “remembering” and “commemoration” of the dead.

In addition to these meanings na also means “to dream” and “to have visions,” as described in the glosses below:

Chol (Aulie and Aulie 1978: 84):

ñajal sueño. 

cha'len ñajal sonar.

ñajlen sonar.

(Attanasi 1973: 297):

na'el dream. 

na'-len dream.

Tzeltal (de Ara):

naalcit vision estando despierto.

gnaalcit sueño que se sueño.

naalcitighon vez vissiones assi. 

naalcitighon soñar.

naamet soñar como cuando sueño de lejos y del emfermo. . . .

Yucatec (Vienna: 189r):

soñar, ver visiones entre sueños entre dormiendo y despierto naay.

(Pío Pérez 1866-1877: 239):

nay vision entre sueño.

(San Francisco 1976: 740):

Sonar como entre duerme u vela naaytah [to dream like between  sleep and wakefulness].

In the Tzeltal and Yucatec glosses above, the emphasis is on the quality of visions, rather than of simple dreams. This kind of “dreaming” may be reflected in a dictionary of sixteenth century Tzotzil (Laughlin n.d.: 388) by the following entries:

na' ta jambeel ta 'olonton 'u'un dios have a revelation. na' ta tambeel ta  'olonton 'u'un dios have a revelation.

The blood-letting rites shown on Yaxchilan Lintels 13, 14, 15, and 25 all portray a vision of flicking serpent and recalled ancestor. The specialized serpent in the vision scenes on Lintels 13 and 14 reappears as the serpent arching over Ruler B on Lintel 3 of Temple IV at Tikal.

The na event appears to record the act of sacrifice both of captives and lords (in self-inflicted blood-letting) as acts to gain merit perhaps with the

gods and certainly before the people. It also can record the acts of humiliation and shaming deliberately committed against captured lords and by lords on themselves as a part of the blood-letting rite. The na event is involved with an act of commemoration of the dead and the visions sought through blood-letting were not only a means of contacting the dead but apparently of preserving their wisdom.

Most of the figures identified as captives in Classic Maya art certainly are captives, but their presentation on public monuments seems not to be related to the documentation of the political and military deeds of Maya rulers, but rather to the quality and number of the sacrificial victims offered by these rulers. Actual scenes of capture are relatively rare in Maya art, as are scenes of killing; almost all of them are found in the Usamacinta region. Likewise, scenes of the torture and killing of captives are rare and found only on pottery, in the Bonampak murals, and perhaps on the Bonampak lintels (although these lintels more likely document the killing of captives in battle).

The treatment of sacrificial victims is not well documented in Maya art, but some comment can be made based on the association of captive sacrifice with auto-sacrifice and on the few pictorial representations of sacrificial rites. It seems evident that public shaming and humiliation played a large role in sacrificial rites; victims wear minimal clothing, which is not, I think, merely the underlothing worn into battle, but a special costume consisting of a pleated or slitted kilt and loincloth, arm (and knee) bindings of rope and its surrogate cloth, and hair bound on top of the head by cloth or leather strips. The hair arrangement seems to have provided the major meaning of captive control—the victims were dragged around by the hair.

The actual rites of sacrifice may have lasted several days and seem to have involved two stages: 1) the ritual torture of the victim, and 2) the killing rite involving decapitation or other means of sacrifice. Of the two rites, I suspect the torture rites were more important because they were more frequently shown. Mutilated and abused captives are known from Yucatecan sculpture and Jaina figurines. M. D. Coe (1973: pl. 33) published a pottery scene of a disembowelled victim tied to a scaffold while a grotesquely dressed figure pokes his intestines with a stick (Fig. 4). Other pottery scenes are now known that show captives in cages and various devices that seem more designed for torture than killing rites. The purpose of torture seems best understood through the association of captive sacrifice with scenes and glyphic records of auto-sacrifice. In the tongue and penis sacrifice, the goal of the action seems to be to draw as much blood as quickly as possible in the hope of inducing visions. The torture of captives may not have been designed to induce visions, but it does seem that the aim was to draw as much blood and cause as much pain as possible without causing death. The gift to the gods seems to have been less the life of the victim and more his blood, perhaps as the “sustenance” demanded by the gods in the Popol Vuh.

Since most of the captive figures can now be identified as sacrificial victims, their presence in particular kinds of scenes may give some indication of the kinds and frequency of events that demanded human sacrifice during the Classic period. The results of such a survey are astounding. The major event on Lintels 13 and 17 is the birth of Shield-Jaguar, son of Bird-Jaguar; the designation of a child as heir-designate seems to be the major stimulation in the murals of Bonampak, the Tablet of the Sun at Palenque, and Stela 22 at Naranjo. At Tikal a major anniversary of an ancestral date is recorded, and at Piedras Negras the sacrificial event occurs two and three days after the death of a ruler. The sacrificial sequence of Lintels 24, 25, and 26 include, among other dates, the accession of Shield-Jaguar and I believe that the pictorial scenes on these lintels record three separate parts of a single ritual that was enacted on each of the dates recorded on these three lintels. Sacrificial figures appear on monuments celebrating period-endings, anniversaries of all types, all major dynastic events, and an entire series of events not yet deciphered. If the number of figures shown is any indication, human sacrifice and blood-letting were continuous and pervasive throughout the Classic period.

Mayanists have long debated the purpose of sacrificial scenes and the identification of captives as individuals or as representatives of a larger group taken in battle. With rare exception, the Emblem Glyph of captives is not recorded, nor are the place of battle and conquest named. Since there are examples in which place is prominently recorded (such as Stela 16 of Dos Pilas and Stela 2 of Aguateca), it must be assumed that the rarity of place identification was deliberate and that the origin of the captive was not important. I suspect this de-emphasis of place reflects the nature of Maya warfare; I do not think it was territorial for the most part.

However, whereas the place of origin was not important in the Classic period, the name of the individual captured was. The names of captives are not only recorded in capture statements, but the listing of captives in royal appellatives was frequent and widespread. In a number of cases, important rulers, such as Shield-Jaguar II on Lintel 10 at Yaxchilan, are

recorded without personal name or title and solely as “captor of---------”

The names of captives are either engraved on their bodies or placed in close proximity.

A significant number of sacrificial figures are not identified; in most

cases, these unidentified figures occur as secondary kneeling figures or in the lower registers of stelae or lintels. These unidentified figures may represent the concept of sacrificial human offering as a part of the “merit” of the ruler rather than several particular individuals. However, the descriptions of sacrificial practices in Yucatan at the conquest suggest that victims had different levels of value. Slaves, orphans, and other disenfranchised members of society could be bought as sacrificial victims, but the most valued offerings were captives of high rank and prowess taken in battle. If war was not primarily territorial in the Classic period, and if the value of a sacrificial victim was determined by rank and character, then the place of origin would carry less importance than the personal name of a victim who brought particular “merit” and “honor” to the giver. I suspect that most, if not all, of the sacrificial figures represent individuals and that those identified by name were persons of rank and reputation whose identities added value to the portraits of rulers.

It now seems likely that the figures on the Scribe, the Orator, the alfardas of Temple XXI, and on the Tablet of the Slaves are sacrificial figures, but they are not captives. They represent rulers who give sacrificial blood in a rite that includes submission to public shaming, and humiliation through a display of forms associated with captive sacrifice—but the ropes binding these lords are not real. Thus blood-sacrifice as well as human sacrifice involved not only obligations of “sustenance” to the gods, but the gaining of merit and public recognition by the donor or giver of blood. Previously, I had thought that sacrifice was an obligatory act ordained by religion, but the proposed reading of the na event and ethnohistorical records suggest that the giving of one’s own blood and of human sacrifice were means of gaining public merit and respect.

The frequency of sacrificial figures in Classic Maya art, the social context for human sacrifice suggested here, and the glyphic and pictorial observations on war and sacrifice presented suggest that nonterritorial raiding for the taking of sacrificial victims was pervasive among the Maya, especially in the Late Classic period. War, human sacrifice, and personal blood-letting seem to have composed a major part of Classic life.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Attanasi, John J.

n.d. Lak T’an: A Grammar of the Chol (Mayan) Word. PhD dissertation. University  of Chicago, 1973.

Aulie, H. Wilbur, and Evelyn W. de Aulie

1978    Diccionario Ch’ol-Español, Español-Ch’ol. Serie de Vocabularios y  Diccionarios Indígenas, Núm. 21. Instituto Linguístico de Verano, Mexico.

Baudez, Claude F., and Peter Mathews

1979    Capture and Sacrifice at Palenque. Tercera Mesa Redonda de Palenque,  (Merle Greene Robertson and Donnan Call Jeffers, eds.) 4: 31-40. Pre-Columbian Art  Research Center, Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico, and Herald Printers, Monterey,  California.

Benson, Elizabeth

1976 Ritual Cloth and Palenque Kings. The Art, Iconography, and Dynasti, History of  Palenque, Part III. Proceedings of the Segunda Mesa Redonda de Palenque (Merle Greene  Robertson ed.): 45-58. Robert Louis Stevenson School, Pebble Beach, California.

Clancy, Flora

1976 Maya Pedestal Stones. New Mexico Studies in the Fine Arts. 1 (1). University of  New Mexico, Albuquerque.

Closs, Michael P.

1979 Venus in the Maya World: Glyphs, Gods, and Associated Phenomena. Tercera  Mesa Redonda de Palenque (Merle Greene Robertson and Donnan Call Jeffers, eds.) 4:  147-166. Pre-Columbian Research Center, Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico, and Herald  Printers, Monterey, California.

Coe, Michael D.

1973 The Maya Scribe and His World. The Grolier Club, New York.

Coffman, Robert J.

n.d. A Commentary on the Hieroglyphic Inscriptions of Naranjo, El Peten,  Guatemala, Periods I and II. Senior honors thesis, University of Texas, Austin, 1979.

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n.d. Painting and Drawing Styles at Tikal, An Historical and Icono-graphic  Reconstruction. PhD dissertation, Department of Fine Arts, Harvard University 1975.  University Microfilms, Ann Arbor.

Edmonson, Munro

1971 The Book of Counsel: The Popol Vuh of the Quiche Maya of Guatemala. Middle  American Research Institute, Publication 35. Tulane University, New Orleans.

FOX James Allen

n.d. Proto-Maya Accent, Morpheme Structure Conditions, and Velar In-

novations. PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 1978.

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KELLEY, David H.

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Laughlin, Robert

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Maya Heart Sacrifice: Cultural Perspective and Surgical Technique 

FRANCIS ROBICSEK

UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHARLOTTE

DONALD M. HALES

UNIVERSITY OE CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES

Sacrifices were an important part of Mesoamerican worship. They ranged from simple offerings of food and various ornaments and valuables to the sacrifice of animals and humans. Human sacrifice in general, and ritual heart removal in particular, were especially widespread customs in the New World; the practice reached epidemic proportions in Mesoamerica during the Late Postclassic period when thousands were slaughtered on such special occasions as the dedication of the twin temples of Tlaloc and Huitzilopochtli in Mexico-Tenochtitlan (Lothrop 1952; 51). Because only a few of the ancient Maya centers, such as Aguateca and Zaculeu, had walls or natural defenses, it was generally believed until the early part of this century that peace and concord prevailed during the Classic period, and that Maya lived in idyllic harmony and seldom practiced the cruel ritual of human sacrifice. A toned-down version of this concept has been expressed by Morley (1956: 184-185):

Judging from the generally peaceful tenor of Classic stage sculptures, Maya  religion throughout this period must have been a more lofty faith, not debased as it  was in later times by wholesale human sacrifice. Only two representations of  human sacrifice are known for this period, both from Piedras Negras. Just as the  Classic stage was the peak of Maya culture, so was it the noblest period of Maya  religion, before the beliefs and practices developed into bloody orgies.

Lothrop (1952: 52) echoed similar views:

The early Maya apparently rarely sacrificed human beings, and there are  only two fairly certain but not definite representations of sacrifice in the Great  period cities south of Yucatan. There is no suggestion of sacrifice in other early art  styles, such as Archaic, Monte Alban I or Olmec. The

Toltec invasion of Yucatan is recorded in legend and confirmed by archaeology,  and it is an obvious mechanism for introducing this custom into Yucatan.

Contrary to these views, we now realize that the Maya princes abhorred neither raids on their neighbors nor the sacrifice of their own subjects. Recent hieroglyphic research has revealed that some of the wars, such as those recorded at Bonampak, Dos Pilas, and Aguateca, were definitely tied to Venus phenomena. In the course of these hostilities high-ranking personages, including some of the rulers themselves, were often captured and later sacrificed. This was the fate of Kan-Xul of Palenque who was captured and later sacrificed by the incumbent ruler of Tonina, and of Uaxaclahun Umul (18-Jog) of Copan, who was taken prisoner and later sacrificed by Cauac-Sky, Lord of Quirigua.

By the early 1970s it was generally recognized (Coe 1973;Joralemon 1974) that human sacrifice was not only commonplace during the Classic period hut was an integral part of Maya religious and socio-political tradition. To support this view, Persis Clarkson (1978) recorded an excess of fifty ceramic paintings which either referred to or portrayed sacrifice by decapitation. She, as well as Nicolas Hellmuth (personal communication) have emphasized that there is an even larger corpus of painted ceramic vessels which at first glance appear to illustrate mundane matters but in fact arc sacrifice-related, even if the implements of the ritual are not actually shown.

Judging from the archaeological evidence, especially vase paintings, this sacrificial activity of the Classic and Early Postclassic Maya, although widespread, did not approximate the numbers of wholesale killings by the Central Mexicans or even the Late Postclassic Toltec-Maya. Surviving records also indicate that the Classic Maya heart sacrifice was a lofty ceremony, probably performed in the main plaza of the ceremonial center and accompanied by the pomp and circumstance of music, golden jaguar hides, and swirling quetzal feathers. The fact that on several ceramic paintings which refer to ritual heart removal we also see personages holding severed human heads (Fig. 1), suggests that heart sacrifice was somehow connected to, and probably practiced together with, ritual decapitation. During the Postclassic period, the emphasis apparently shifted away from the elaborateness of the ceremony to the increasing number of victims; the social status of the victims as well as of the priest-executioner probably changed also. The Toltec invasion brought about an infusion of foreign customs including the worship of blood-thirsty alien gods. This changed the timing and the location of the ritual as well as the socio-political content, the techniques, and the paraphernalia. It is likely, though, that even during the Late Postclassic, this ceremony was still regarded as a very

Fig. 1 Polychrome vase, possibly from the Piedras Negras region, c. A.d. 700-800. Sacrifice is the subject of the complex mythological scene in which three lords participate—a death god holding a severed human head, and two victims. Private collection. Photograph © Barbara and Justin Kerr, all rights reserved.

important socio-political event with stong religious overtones, performed in public and attended by many.

One of the most important pictorial records of Toltec-Maya ritual heart removal is Gold Disk H recovered from the sacred cenote at Chichen Itza (Fig. 2). This object, along with other gold repousse reliefs found in the same cenote not only provides a wealth of data about the customs at the time of its own making, but as noted by Elizabeth Benson (1979: 1), it also includes “along with the imported Central Mexican motifs, a great many Classic Maya elements.” During the centuries that followed the Mexican invasion, additional significant changes in Maya religious rites were brought about by the synthesis with Christianity, a fact affirmed by several sixteenth-century Spanish writers:

The old men of these provinces [Yucatan] say that anciently, near to eight-hundred  years ago, idolatry was not practiced, and afterwards when the Mexicans entered it  and took possession of it, a captain, who was called Quetzalquat [Quetzalcoatl] in  the Mexican language, which is to say in ours, plumage of the serpent... introduced  idolatry into this land and the use of idols for gods, which he made of wood, of  clay and of stone. And he made them [the Maya] worship these idols and they  offered many things of the hunt, of merchandise and above all blood of their  nostrils and ears, and the hearts of those whom they sacrificed in his services.... (Morley 1956: 185)

The Toltec-Maya sacrificial rituals were not limited to mere heart removal; they included the flaying of the victim as well as the eating of his flesh. Landa (in Tozzer 1941: 1 19-120) writes:

Fig. 2 Repousse Gold Disk H recovered from the cenote of Chichen Itza, probably the most informative record of the Toltec-Maya heart sacrifice. Diameter 22.9 cm (after Lothrop 1952: fig. 1).

Sometimes they made this [heart] sacrifice on the stone and high altar of (lie  temple, and then they threw the body, now dead, rolling down the steps. The  officials below took it and flayed it whole, taking off all the skin with the exception  of the feet and hands, and the priest, all bare, covered himself, stripped naked as he  was, with that skin, and the others danced with him. And this was considered as a  thing of great solemnity amongst them. The custom was usually to bury in the  court of the temple those whom they had sacrificed, or else they ate them, dividing  him up among those who arrived [first] and the lords, and the hands, feet and head  were reserved for the priest and his officials, and they considered those who were  sacrificed as holy.

Flaying the victim and later donning his skin were carried out in honor of the god Xipe Totec, whose feast, Tlacaxipehualiztli (“the flaying of man”), was celebrated in Central Mexico during the second annual veintena (Seler 1899: 76-100). As for eating the sacrificial flesh, Tozzer (1941:120) goes to great length not to call it “cannibalism” and to place the blame on the Mexicans:

The ceremonial eating of human flesh was, as Landa intimates, a holy act and  we have just learned that pieces of the body of self-selected victims of human  sacrifice were consumed “in great devotion and veneration.” This was not  called true cannibalism if we can believe Las Casas (1875-6, 3, CXVIII) who  states they did not practice wholesale cannibalism and several of the  Relaciones (RY, 1: 149, etc.) in which there is a direct statement, “These natives  did not eat human flesh.” Ciudad Real in his Relation on Ponce (1932, ed., 314)  also writes, “They did not eat human flesh, which was very common in  Mexico and in many other provinces, and even nowadays (1588) they do it in  some.” This was probably one of the customs introduced from Mexico  accompanying human sacrifice. 

The Spaniards were soon to learn that even they were not immune to the ferocity of the Toltec-Maya heart sacrifice, as several ended their lives at the hands of Maya priests:

Similar was the fate of the Franciscan friar, Juan Henríquez and a Captain  Francisco de Mirones, who, with a force of Spaniards, mestizos, and Indians, were  attacked at mass in a small village in southern Quintana Roo while attempting to  penetrate to Itza territory. The whole party was caught unarmed in the church and  were massacred. The priest and the captain were each tied to a mainpost of the  little pole-and-thatch church, and their hearts were wrenched out. The aggressors  were mainly Christian Maya who had lapsed into paganism. That was in 1623;  despite 80 years of Christianity, the old rite and the technique of heart removal had  not been forgotten!

 The same rite was followed by the independent Itza of Tayasal. The  Dominican friars of Cristobal de Prado and Jacinto de Vargas fell into the hands of  the Itza in 1696, less than a year before the downfall of that last Maya stronghold.  Tied hand and foot to an X-shaped wooden frame, like the Apostle of Saint  Andrew, they were raised, presumably to a vertical position, whereupon the Itza  high priest opened their breasts and removed their hearts. (Thompson 1970: 177- 178)

As time marched on and the old Maya religion, already made decadent by Mexican influence, also became a fugitive faith, there was further and significant degradation of the ceremony of heart sacrifice. The rituals moved from the cities to the villages, from the villages to the milpas, and finally to the secrecy of forest clearings. The Spartan simplicity and the secrecy surrounding the ceremony forbidden by the Spanish priests is evident in the testimony of 1562 of Juan Couoh (the appointed schoolmaster of Yaxcaba) given when charges of relapses into paganism of baptized Yucatecs were being investigated:

Thus they untied the youngster and threw him on the mat. The priests handed over  the candles they held, and four of them caught hold of the boy and placed him in a  supine position, holding him by the hands and feet. Pedro Euan, taking the flint  knife, made an opeing on the left side of the youth’s heart, grasped the heart and  cut the arteries with his knife, He gave the severed heart to the priest, Gaspar  Chun, who made two cuts

like across in its extremity and then raised it on high. Next he took some part—I  do not know what it was—and placed it in the mouth of the largest of the idols  which was that of Itzamna. Then they took the boy’s body and heart and his blood,  which they had collected in a large gourd, as well as the idols, and all went with  them to the cacique’s house. I do not know what they did there. As they left they  again warned me not to speak to the friars of what I had seen. “Even if they burn  us alive, we must not say a word,” they added.

 I went to my house for what they had done seemed very evil.

( Thompson 1966: 281)

Before heart removal ceased as a Maya religious ritual, it underwent a final and most interesting change by acquiring some ceremonial characteristics of the reluctantly accepted new faith, Christianity. We can easily imagine how, when a converted Maya received his first religious education and heard of Abraham’s planned sacrifice of Isaac, the story of Jesus’s crucifixion, or the legends of the martyrs, his own heart must have filled with satisfaction at the thought: “These Spanish barbarians are not so uncivilized after all!” There is ample ethnohistorical evidence that soon after the Conquest the Maya started to adapt and intermingle some of the traits of Christianity with the rituals of the old Maya religion (a process still very much alive); victims of heart sacrifice suddenly began to appear nailed or tied to crucifixes. Several such case histories are recorded in Colonial inquiries. The auto-da-fe conducted in Yucatan in 1562 mentions several unfortunates who were first crucified, then their hearts taken out. The testimony of Francisco Camal taken in 1562 reads:

This witness saw how about three months ago, a little more or less, another  sacrifice was made within the cemetery of the church at the foot of a cross to some  idols and demons which were there, in which they killed a boy who was called Ah  Tuz, whom, in order to sacrifice and kill him, they crucified and placed on a large  cross, and they nailed his hands and raised him on high. And they lowered him  again, and thus, on the cross, alive as he was, Luis Nauat went and opened him  and took out his heart and gave it to the Ah-Kin, Francisco Balam, who offered it to  the demons and idols which were there. And after (he was) dead, he (Balam) made  them a sermon . . . And when this sermon was finished they went to throw the said  boy in a cenote which was out of the way from there which is called Chemzenote,  and they threw the said boy in nailed to the cross as he was. (Tozzer 1941: 116)

A similar report was given by another witness, Antonio Pech:

And he saw how the said girls were placed on two crosses (and) tied.

And the above mentioned told him to keep silent and not to say anything in order  companions who saw it has been silent for fear. And (the girls) being placed on the  cross, the ah kines and the deceased ones (Juan and Lorenzo Cocom) said, “Let  these girls die crucified as did Jesus

Christ, he who they say was our Lord, but we do not know if this is so.”

And afterwards in saying this, they lowered them from the cross, unbound them,  opened them and took out the hearts and the ah kines offered them to the demons  as anciently they were accustomed to do . . . and afterwards they carried the girls to  throw them into the said cenote. (Tozzer 1941: 116)

Similar events, when the rite of ritual heart removal was intermingled with symbols and ceremonial traits of Christianity, were reported also from Quintana Roo, and as late as 1696 in Tayasal (Thompson 1970: 177). To the great displeasure of the Spaniards, some of these rites took place in Christian cemeteries, churchyards, or even in the churches themselves. Landa himself speaks of the people who are “violators of the church” sacrificing “at the foot of the cross” (Tozzer 1941: 115). A testimonial to this was given by a certain Francisco Kantun, schoolmaster of Usil, who witnessed the crucifixion of two boys during the Holy Week following Easter. While their chests were opened, the executioner told those present, “You see here the figure of Jesus Christ and we offer to our gods the heart of these who are crucified” (Tozzer 1941: 116). When a Spanish court accused the Maya of abandoning Christianity and of returning to such ancient rites as heart sacrifice, the reply was: “An angel descended and received this sacrifice” (Tozzer 1941: 143).

THE VICTIM

Before discussing the victim’s identity, we should examine the events or occasions that prompted human sacrifice. What possibly instigated such a ceremony during the Classic period is the subject of much speculation. In numerous instances, high-ranking prisoners included rulers of adjacent or neighboring sites, and possibly their retinues taken captive. References to this come primarily from hieroglyphic inscriptions on monuments and murals at the “victor’s ” home site. Lack of data from the Classic period make it presently impossible to determine who else, beyond royal personages, might have fallen victim.

In early Colonial records, we read that heart sacrifices were usually done on “account of some misfortune or necessity” and that they were ordered by the priest (chilan) or the governor (cacique) (Tozzer 1941: 115; Thompson 1966: 282).

On most pictorial representations of sacrificial rites, the victim is stripped, hence it is difficult to determine his social status. Some examples, however, provide enough signs (an elegant loincloth, an ornate hairdo, body jewelry, etc,) to indicate that he is not an ordinary person but a dignitary of high rank, a ruler, or a military leader. In other instances,

Fig. 3 Polychrome-on-stucco cylinder, c. A.d. 600-750, probably from the northern Peten. A sacrificial scene in which the body of an infant, whose lower chest or midriff is cut open, is being offered (?) to a jaguar by a knife-wielding priestly personage. Additional characters in the scene macabre are a small, black-faced attendant, a young lord with a ceremonial staff, and a monster-faced deity holding a severed human head. Height 22.5 cm. The Edwin Pearlman Collection. Photograph © Barbara and Justin Kerr, all rights reserved.

especially when several prisoners are shown, one gets the impression that they are either slaves or the rank-and-file of the enemy. A special group of victims of heart sacrifice were children, whom we see with their chests torn open on several sacrificial scenes of the Classic period (Fig. 3; sec also Robicsek and Hales 1981: figs. 17, 18, 20a, 23a, 88). Apparently the custom of child sacrifice persisted into the later periods because numerous references to it are also made in the early Colonial records, especially in the Sotuta and Homun testimony where a special term cimchich is used for “child sacrifice” (reconstructed by Roys as cim ch'ich tentatively translated as “kill the little ones” or “kill the birds” (Tozzer 1941: 117). The same document also mentions that some of these children were unclaimed orphans or horn out of wedlock, others were simply bought and donated by pious parents. During the Late Postclassic period, heart sacrifice was by no means limited to children, because in the same testimony we read “that in addition to boys and girls, men and women full grown were sacrificed to the ‘demons’ ” ( Tozzer 1941: 117).

In the Relación de Valladolid (1900, 2: 27—28), we read that slaves were regularly sacrificed to please the gods: “The lords and chief men killed some male and female Indian slaves which they possessed so that, taking out the heart, they might oiler it to these idols.”

A special custom that existed among the early lacandon Indians was the prompt sacrifice of a musician—in lieu of the originally intended victim-who missed his beat on the drum while celebrating the ritual of human sacrifice (Tozzer 1941: 117). Undoubtedly, some of our symphony conductors would love to revive this tradition.

THE STATE OH CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE VICTIM

Unfortunately, all Classic and Early Postclassic period portrayals of this grim ritual show the post festam presentation but not the actual event itself. Therefore, all statements referring to the state of consciousness of the victim during his ordeal are based on evidence from the Late Postclassic Toltec-Maya period and on early Colonial records concerning “relapses into paganism.” When trying to reconstruct the events of ritual heart removal, one should naturally consider some of the knowledge we possess of the Precolumbian mind which indeed had more than a streak of cruelty in it. This attitude was certainly not limited to the Maya and other Mesoamerican cultures; it was characteristic of such ancient civilizations as the Babylonian and Egyptian, and—as the natives of the New World soon found out—it was practiced by the Christian conquerors, as well.

Besides a desire to see the victim of heart sacrifice suffer, there may have been other reasons why the ritual was performed while he was still alive. While some of the sacrifices were regarded as an honor, and even to lead to the apotheosis of the victim, other rituals may have served as punishments for various deeds. We should consider that heart sacrifice, though clearly regarded as an offering to the gods, also served another function of equal importance—that of a pattern et circenses spectacular for the populace. A victim walking with dignity to his doom, or a hated enemy resisting his captors, must have certainly created more of a spectacle than post-mortem public heart removal.

While we believe that the victim remained conscious up to a point during his vivisection, it is also reasonable to suppose that the Maya, who were connoisseurs of hallucinogenic drugs and psychotropic substances and possessed a herbarium of a wide array of somniferous plants, did sedate some of their victims to a degree. Such practices have been documented among the Natchez Indians, who drugged their intended victims into stupefaction before the rite of strangulation (Robicsek 1978: 46). If the Maya practiced similar customs, it may have been limited to voluntary victims or to those chosen at random, not to prisoners or criminals. It may also have been part of the arrangement to assure a passage into the afterlife. We know, for example, that the Mexicans sometimes disguised their sacrificial victims to represent the gods themselves. The Maya may have done the same thing, because on ceramic paintings of the Classic period we often see deities being sacrificed or being prepared for sacrifice. It certainly could have created a scene of embarrassment if the “god” being led to his demise and later resurrection suddenly changed his mind and resisted the acolytes bent on ushering him to heaven.

We indeed believe that as it is shown in the finds of Chichen Itza and corroborated in most Colonial records, the heart of the victim was removed while he was still alive. There may, of course, have been exceptions, such as enemies fallen on the battlefield or individuals chosen for some other type of execution. There is ample reference to this in the early Colonial records. From the Sotuta and Homun testimony, for example, we learn that the victim was at times killed by decapitation before his heart was extracted (Tozzer 1941: 116). Another method of human sacrifice practiced by the Maya during the Postclassic period was “hurling the victim from the summit of the pyramid onto a pile of stones in the court below. The heart was removed and offered to the new idol, ...” (Morley 1956: 214).

There is evidence that the ceremony of heart sacrifice was not limited solely to human victims, but that it was performed on animals as well. There are several ceramic paintings from the Classic period that either show or insinuate animal sacrifice. We know from early Colonial testimony taken at Sotuta and Homun regarding the persistence of “idolatry” that such events indeed did occur. According to witnesses, the most common subject of heart sacrifice after human was his best friend, the dog:

And afterwards they made another sacrifice in the church in which they killed a  dog and offered the heart of the dog to the idols, and those who were there cooked  and ate the said dog, and “They were present at another sacrifice within the church  at night. And in it they sacrificed a dog in the ancient manner, and with the heart,  after it was taken out, they smeared the faces of the demons, for each one of those  present brought Ins own (idol).” In another passage, “He took the said heart (of the  dog), burned it and offered it before the ten idols,” and finally we read, “And in the  said sacrifice they sacrificed a dog and Diego Tzab, who served as priest, took out  its heart and smeared the said heart on the snouts of twenty idols which they had  present at the said sacrifice.” (Scholes and Adams 1938: 101, 107, 141, 145; in Tozzer  1941: 114-115)

Landa gave similar information:

And they offered everything else which they possessed. From some animals they  tore out the heart and offered it. Other animals they presented whole, some living  and some dead, some raw and some cooked, and they also made large offerings of  bread and wine and of all kinds of food and drinks which they used. (Tozzer 1941:  114) 

The substitution of animals for human heart sacrifice has also been mentioned in the Relación de Valladolid:

Those who did not own them |slaves| offered little dogs and other kinds 

of animals, smearing the mouth and nostrils of these idols with the blood, (in  Tozzer 1941: 143)

THE PRIEST-SACRIFICER

There are few portraits in Classic Maya pictorial and sculptural records of the sacrificed, and even fewer representations of the person who performed the heart sacrifice. In these cases we only suppose that the individual who stands by or carries the body of the open-chested victim is the one technically responsible for his demise. On these portraitures the “executioner” is elaborately dressed; he wears body jewelry, jaguar pelts, quetzal feathers, etc., to indicate his high position as a noble, or even as a supernatural. The Late Postclassic Maya-Toltec presentation of heart sacrifice, as depicted on one of the golden disks of Chichen Itza (the only such portraiture presently known, on which the heart-remover is clearly identified), also shows him as an ornate, high-ranking individual (Fig. 2).

It is, therefore, somewhat surprising that Landa describes the Nacom, whose duty was to excise the heart of the victim, as an official of lower rank:  The Nacoms were two officers; the first was perpetual and did not bring much  honor with it, since it was he that opened the breasts of the human victims whom  they sacrificed. The second was a choice made of a captain for war and for other  feasts. (Tozzer 1941: 112-113)

There are two possible explanations. The first may be that as the ritual of heart sacrifice changed over time, the office of priest-sacrificer was gradually downgraded. Another possibility may be that there was a high-ranking priest in charge of the ceremony who took care of such things as incantations and offerings, but that he had an acolyte who perfomed the heart excision itself. A later record of Landa indeed suggests this division of ranks: “At this came the executioner, the Nacom . . . struck him with great skill, . . . seized the heart, . . . and having placed it on a plate, he gave it to the priest, who went very quickly and anointed the faces of the idols with fresh blood” (Tozzer 1941: 119).

Reference to such an arrangement is also made in the account rendered by Thompson, in which the person who performed the excision of the heart itself “gave the severed heart to the priest” (Thompson 1966: 281). Such an arrangement is not foreign even to the Western mentality, which for many centuries accepted the division of the medical profession into groups of dignified physicians and lowly barber surgeons. Remnants of this attitude persist in Great Britain, where the surgeon, in contrast to nonsurgical “doctor” specialists, is addressed and referred to simply as “mister.”

A compromise between these two possibilities was presented by Lothrop, based upon his study of Gold Disk II from Chichen Itza (Fig. 2).

While he accepts Landa’s report that the heart removal routinely was done by the nacom, he believes that the high priest may have taken this duty on special occasions, such as the ritual commemorated on the disk:

The sumptuously adorned and resplendent figure who takes out the heart on disk  H does not tally with Landa’s picture of the lowly Nacom. It seems more probable  that he is the high priest and that the ill-clad individual standing second from the  right actually is the Nacom, deprived of his office on the occasion commemorated  by the disk. The possibility of this interpretation is enhanced by the fact that a  priest who rarely acted as executioner would be far more likely to have the event  recorded in gold than a Nacom engaged in his normal trade. (Lothrop 1952: 53)

Just as the modern surgeon, the priest-sacrificer also must have had numerous trained assistants. On Late Classic period vase paintings they are shown as lower-ranking, but still ornately dressed, individuals. Landa repeatedly states that they were old men chosen specially for this service. Lothrop (1952: 53) disagrees: “On Disk H, they are definitely young warriors. They all wear back shields of Toltec type, the only examples seen on disks. Their hats apparently indicate minor military rank.”

Besides the four assistants (chacs), Lothrop (1952: 54) describes an additional figure whom he believes to be the Nacom who usually performs the sacrifices:

In front of this individual and behind two of the Chacs is the figure which we  suggested may be a Nacom whose job has been taken over by a warrior-priest. Like  the executioner he is stripped for action and wears only a breech clout. His face is  tattooed and he wears his hair cut short except for one long lock. No other head at  Chichen Itza is like this, which implies that this man had some special social or  ceremonial function.

Haberland (1954: 100-101) and later Benson disagree with this interpretation and believe that the figure is but another prisoner awaiting his term to be sacrificed:

His hands arc close together in front, and it is possible that the original relief of the  disk may have shown them to have been bound together; the hand of a richly  dressed figure standing behind him seems to touch his upper arm; moreover, short- cut hair with one long lock is generally associated with sacrificial victims or  prisoners in Pre-Columbian cultures; facial tattooing may also be associated with  prisoners. His lack of specific Toltec or Maya characteristics may signify that this  figure is neither, but, instead, a foreigner. (Benson 1979: 41)

ANATOMICAL KNOWLEDGE AND INSTRUMENTS OF THE PRIEST-SACRIFICER

Pictorial or sculptural presentations of human anatomy are infrequent in Mesoamerican cultures, and the few examples that refer to the anatomical details of the heart itself are primarily from Central Mexico (Fig. 4B). Since, however, Maya artists sometimes presented the exterior of the hu-

Fig. 4 Maya and Central Mexican examples of anatomic presentation of the heart. (a) Detail of a ceramic statuette, Early Classic period, probably from Tikal. The November Collection, (b) Detail of the Piedra Itzpapalotl, Museo Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico (after Beyer 1921: fig. 5).

man body and its bony frame most naturalistically, the ancient Maya certainly must have had appreciable anatomical knowledge. It is inconceivable that some of this knowledge was not possessed by the priest-sacrificer who, besides being a renowned expert in skillfully and swiftly removing the human heart, may have had the additional duties of curing and treating the ill. Apparently the speed with which the heart was removed was a very important matter, and the priest-sacrificer was keen not to disappoint his spectators. According to Colonial records, he “snatched it [the heart] out alive” (Tozzer 1941: 118-119) still bleeding and beating, with “all the quickness in the world” (Tozzer 1941: 221). Failure to do so was a likely ground for disqualification from office. Even European observers could not help but to admire his speed. Thomas Lopez Medel wrote in 1612 that the Maya priest performed the heart removal with so much ease and skill that “his quickness was an extraordinary thing” (Tozzer 1941: 221).

IMPLEMENTS THAT MAY HAVE BEEN USED IN CONJUNCTION WITH HUMAN HEART SACRIFICE

The simple truth regarding the vast richness of different stone objects excavated from Maya sites is that we do not know which was used for what. The same stone knife may have been used to cut meat (kitchen utensil), kill game (limiting implement), light off enemies (military weapon), or carve wooden objects (industrial tool). To say that the great

Fig. 5 Details from Stelae 11 (a) and 14 (b) of Piedras Negras, portraying what is probably a stylized presentation of human heart sacrifice. The heart emerges from the victim’s chest as a symbolic flower embellished with a mat design and with quetzal leathers that represent streams of spurting blood (after Morley 1956: pi. 28a, b).

number of magnificent stone knives excavated at Maya ceremonial centers serves as proof that the custom of heart sacrifice was widespread, would certainly not he acceptable. On the other hand, if it can otherwise be proven that the ritual of heart removal was indeed widely practiced, then it is logical to suppose that some of the weaponlike like implements found at ceremonial centers probably served sacrificial purposes as well. The best examples of these implements were manufactured of flint, obsidian, and jade; however, a number of other weaponlike objects were also found, especially axes¹ and mace heads which were made of lower quality minerals such as “snake stone,” tuff, granite, basalt, and other metamorphic rocks.

We had the opportunity to examine a large number of Maya stone implements found at different archaeological sites of the Peten and of the Yucatec peninsula, which are now housed in various private and public collections. When these objects are placed adjacent to our own surgical instruments, there is no difficulty in matching the tools used today to expose the heart, with the stone implements suitable to a similar task.

¹We do not include with this term the large number of hachas, those poorly understood ceremonial implements that were connected with the Mesoamerican ball game.

Stone implements and accessories can be divided into the following principal groups:

1) The Altar. Regardless of which approach is used to reach the heart, the supine posture with an upward-arching back is the preferred patient position in today’s operating rooms as it probably was for the victim of the Maya priest-sacrificer. Examples of this posture may be seen on Stelae 11 and 14 at Piedras Negras (Fig. 5), in the codices (Fig. 6), on wall paintings at Chichen Itza (Fig. 7), and described in Landa’s Relación:

If the heart of the victim was to be taken out, they led him with a great show and  company of people into the court of the temple, and having smeared him with blue  and put on a coroza, they brought him up to the round altar, which was the place  of sacrifice, and after the priest and his officials had anointed the stone with a blue  color, and by purifying the temple drove out the evil spirit, the Chacs seized the  poor victim, and placed him very quickly on his back upon that stone, and all four  held him by the legs and arms, so that they divided him in the middle. (Tozzer  1941: 118-119)

To obtain and maintain the struggling victim in this hyperextended position, a convex sacrificial stone, such as the one at the Main Plaza of Copan (Fig. 8), would have been suitable. How many of these so-called “sacrificial altars” found throughout the Maya sites were actually used for human sacrifice nobody knows. Flat platforms also might have been used for the same purpose, simply modifying them by placing some object,

fig. 7 Heart sacrifice as shown on the wall paintings of Chichen Itza, (a) Temple of the Jaguars; (b) Temple of the Warriors (after Morley 1956: pl. 28e, f).

such as a small log or a roll of cloth under the victim’s back, while the attendants maintained a lateral and downward traction on his extremities.

This does not prove that all, or even the majority, of human sacrifices of the Classic period were performed on victims in the prone position. As shown on the famous graffiti on Temple II at Tikal and on three vase paintings (Fig. 9; M. D. Coe 1975: no. 16; M. D. Coe 1973: no. 33), some sacrificial ceremonies involved victims tied in standing or sitting positions to specially constructed scaffolds. Of these four examples of scaffold sacrifices, one is an execution by arrows (Tikal), the other by evisceration (M. D. Coe 1973: no. 33) and it is likely that the remaining two represent preparation for ritual sacrifice other than by heart removal. Therefore, one can fairly state that there is no evidence to suggest that during the Classic period the Maya performed heart sacrifice in any position other than with the victim lying on his back.

After the Spanish Conquest, there was a change in victim posture. A number of Colonial reports state that they were kept upright, tied to poles, posts, or crosses. This may have been a custom learned from the Christian conquerors who often executed the Maya in vertical position by shooting or hanging. Another possible explanation is that whereas during the Preconquest period heart removal was a public event, performed in the specially built plazas of large centers where spectators seated on elevated stalls commanded an excellent view of the sacrificial platform, after the old Maya religion became fugitive the ritual was performed in secrecy, usually in remote villages which served as the last pockets of resistance against the 

Fig. 8 Altar of Stela 4 at Copan, c. 9.15.0.0.0. The convex shape of the stone seems adapted to maintain sacrificial victims in a hyperextended posture for heart excision. The indentation on the top and the spiral grooves on the sides may have served to receive the heart after its removal and to channel the blood flow (after Robicsek 1972: pl. 76).

Fig. 9 An example of scaffold sacrifice (sacrificial rite during which the victim is tied to a scaffold) as seen on a polychrome vase from the Late Classic period, c. A.D. 700-800, of the northern Peten, probably from the Ik Emblem Glyph site. Height 19.7 cm. Photograph courtesy the Art Institute of Chicago

Fig. 10. (a) Large Maya sacrificial (?) knives from the northern Peten compared to a large modern orthopedic knife, (b) Obsidian blade flaked off a core (middle) compared to a modern surgical scalpel. Private collection.

Spanish invasion. Under such conditions, tying the victim upright to a stake may have been more practical because it required fewer trained assistants and provided greater. visibility to the people gathered in the village streets or in the forest clearings. There are also Colonial records that indicate that the tying of a victim to a stake in an upright position was especially common along the middle Usumacinta Valley, in the so-called territory of El Prospero (Thompson 1970: 177).

2) Bowls/Plates. In early Postconquest descriptions of human sacrifices, it was mentioned several times that the heart was placed on “plates or bowls.” According to Landa, after ritual removal, the heart was “carried ... to the new idol, and offered ... to him between two platters” (Tozzer 1941: 143). The custom of presenting the heart of the sacrificial victim to the gods in a bowl (cajete), on a plate, or on the one covered by the other, has also been mentioned in the testimony given at Homun. Tozzer quotes one of the witnesses as saying: “The bowls in which they place the said heart they call zuhuy lac, which in Spanish language means ‘virgins’." Based on this information, Tozzer suggested that similar dishes found in burials of the Classic period may have originally contained human entrails, hearts among them (Tozzer 1941: 143).

3) Knives. All the ancient Maya knives we had the opportunity to examine were made either of flint or of obsidian, with the length of blade varying from six to seventy-six cm (shorter blades were classified as arrowheads). Some of the longer “knives” in reality may have been used as spear heads or javelins. All flint and obsidian blades were made by chipping and pressure flaking. The sharpness of some of the later ones exceeded that of a contemporary razor or of a surgical scalpel (Fig. 10). Whether these blades originally had handles or were directly hand held, we do not know. There is, however, pictorial evidence that the Maya used both types of knives in human sacrifice. Surviving examples of “complete knives” (blades with handles) are rare, probably because most handles were made of perishable wood. Among the few “complete” Maya knives we know of is a flint blade from Chiapas with a stuccoed wooden handle in the shape of a fist (Fig. iid). We also studied several large obsidian daggers from the Guatemalan highlands in which the handle and blade were made of a single piece of volcanic glass. Willard (1926: 140) and later Morley (1956: fig. 14) published the picture of a flint knife with wooden handle found in the cenote of Chichen Itza (Fig. IIc).

The stone blade was not only a vital but also a sacred object for the ancient Maya. It is portrayed in such a context on numerous vase paintings where it often forms not only part of the mythological action, but also of

I''rands Robicsek and Donald Hales

Fig. 12 Examples of sacrificial knives on polychrome ceramic paintings from the hate Classic period of the northern Peten: (a) Detail of a vase dated c. 9.16.3.13. 14 4 lx 12 Cumku (a.d. 755), probably painted by the “Altar de Sacrificios Artist” at Ik Emblem Glyph site. Photograph © Barbara and Justin Kerr, all rights reserved (after Robicsek and Hales 1983: fig. 22a). (b) Detail of a vase dated c. post 9.14. 10.0.0. (a.d. 721) to pre 9.15.17.10.4 (a.d. 748). The Edwin Pearlman Collection. Photograph © Barbara and Justin Kerr, all rights reserved (after Robicsek and Hales 1982: fig. 64).

the iconography and of the glyphic text (Fig. 12). In the Popol Vuh saga, personified knives are prominently referred to in the trial of the Hero Twins when they are obliged to spend a night in the formidable “House of Knives” (Edmonson 1971: lines 3761-3774):

And so it was then that the sons went back to Knife House,

The second trial of Hell.

And that was again when they were supposed

To be all chopped up by knives,

And quickly then, in their hearts,

They would be dead, in their hearts, but they didn’t die.

They spoke to the knives;

Then they advised them,

“What is yours is all the flesh of animals,”

They said to the knives.

And they did not move further,

But each one dropped his point,

All of

The knives.

Reference to sacrificial knives was made in the Homun testimony, where one of the witnesses calls it u kab ku, “the arm of the god” (Tozzer 1941:119). These knives were treated with respect, and we learn that a white cloth was wrapped around their handles when they were used. During the later Colonial period, the flint blade (navajón de piedra) was replaced with steel knives of Spanish manufacture (cuchillo) as the principal tool of ritual heart removal (Tozzer 1941: 119).

4)    The Axe. The instrument designated by the name “axe” (both the one-piece and the hafted variety) is often shown on both sculptural and pictorial records in connection with sacrificial rites, primarily decapitations. An axelike weapon made of soft metal manufactured in the very Late Postclassic period has not only been pictured but also described in Landa’s Relación. Our find of such a Preconquest axe (Fig. 13) indeed confirms Tozzer’s supposition that the “particular metal” of Landa’s was brass, probably imported from Tabasco (Tozzer 1941: 121). We know of only one Postclassic illustration on which an axelike instrument is implicated as the tool of ritual heart removal. While it is not impossible that the heart was literally “hacked out” from the chest of the unfortunate victim, with such an axe it most certainly was messy, time consuming, and cruel even by Mesoamerican standards and, therefore, not only impractical but unlikely.

5)    The Claw-knife. In the “sacrificial weaponry” complex, the so-called “claw-knife” has remained a perplexing enigma (Fig. 14). This instrument is portrayed almost exclusively in the context of sacrificial scenes on Classic period stone monuments and ceramic vessels (Fig. 15). It is shown as a three-pronged blade with a semilunar or circular handle enclosure and is carried by rulers and other high-ranking personages, some of whom probably carried out priestly functions.² It is most probable that this ominous weapon was used on the sacrificial victim rather than as originally suspected, as a type of brass-knuckle weapon. It is also very likely that its usage was in one way or another part of the ceremony of ritual heart removal; exactly what the priest-sacrificer did with it, we do not know. Looking at the different examples of these round, lobated, and multipronged flints being wielded by supernaturals and humans alike, one has

²A two-pronged blade from northern Peten, initially labeled as a claw-knife, was later identified by ns as a spearhead. A four-pronged claw-knife is shown on a fresco in the Temple of the Warriors at Chichen Itza (Fig. 16H).

Fig. 13 Late Postclassic bronze axe from Yucatan and flint axe from the Classic period of Peten. Private collections.

Fig.14 Different types of claw-knives of the Classic period, provenance unknown. Private collections.

Fig. 15 (a) Dignitary, his body painted black, holding a tri-pronged claw-knife on a red background polychrome vase, Late Classic period, Uaxactun (after Anton 1970: pl. 64). (b) Jaguar impersonator and attendant holding tri-pronged claw-knives on Lintel 2, Temple III, at Tikal (after Adams et al. 1961: fig. 18).

the impression that there is a gradual morphological transition from the round “personified” flint blade, a favorite weapon of GI of the Palenque Triad of gods, to a smaller and narrower tri-pronged knife, as seen on Altar $ at Tikal (Figs. i6e, and 17). The former undoubtedly seems rather symbolic while the one portrayed at Tikal seems more practical and certainly more menacing. Having seen several “claw-knives” of different shapes and sizes in various collections, we have been unable to bring them into a meaningful context with any surgical instrument which is being, or has ever been, used in heart operations. Similarly, we have yet to imagine any novel way in which the claw-knives may have been used as tools to expose the human heart.

On the basis of our own unsuccessful attempts, we have to disagree with Clarkson (1978: 93) who stated that: “the three pronged knife . . . was commonly used by the Maya for splitting open the rib cage in order to remove a heart.” The only theory we may offer as to the usage of these tri-pronged blades is that they are exactly what they seem—an instrument designed to indict lacerations similar to those caused by claws, probably

Fig. 16 Different types of ceremonial flints, a series which may represent the derivation of the multi-pronged claw-knife from the “personified” round flint blade, (a) Detail of a codex-style vase, A.d. 750-800, Codex-style Site A, probably the northern Peten. Private collection (after Robicsek and Hales 1982: no. 19). (b) Detail of Stela 7 at Etzna, c. 9.15.10.0.0.0 ± 2 katuns (after Proskouriakoff 1950: fig, 83d). (c) Detail of a codex-style vase, A.D. 750-800, Codex-style Site D, probably the northern Peten (after Robicsek and Hales 1982: no. 179). (d) Detail of Stela 1 at Santoton (after Blom and LaFarge 1927, 2: 309); (e) Detail of Stela 30 at Naranjo, c. 9.14.0.0.0 ± 2 katuns (after Proskouriakoff 1950: fig. 63a). (i) Detail of Lintel 2, Temple III at Tikal, c. 9.19.0.0.0 ± 2 katuns (after Adams et al, 1961: fig. 18). (G;) Detail of a polychrome vase, Late Classic period, Uaxactun (after Anton 1970: 40). (H) Flint from Chichen Itza, exact site unidentified (after Proskouriakoff 1950: fig. 33r).

Fig. 17 Detail of Altar 5 at Tikal, with two priestly personages, one wielding a tri-pronged claw-knife, the other holding a “regular” blade.

those of the jaguar. It is conceivable that the final act of Classic heart sacrifice was to offer the body of the victim (sans son coeur) to be mangled by jaguars, who were regarded as high-ranking deities of the Classic period Maya pantheon. Indeed, a scene like this is shown on a stuccoed polychrome vase now in the Edwin Pearlman Collection. Later in time, for practical reasons, the role of the jaguar was likely turned over to jaguar impersonators—let us not forget that prominent Maya personages were often identified as Balams (Yucatec) or Bahlums (Chol) and portrayed wearing jaguar skins, sporting jaguar tails, and carrying claw-knives—to inflict “jaguar injuries.” This theory is supported by the scene carved on Round Altar 5 at Tikal (Fig. 17) where we see two dignitaries engaged in an apparent sacrifice-related scene; one holds a flint blade (to remove the heart?), the other wields a tri-pronged claw-knife (to mangle the sacrificed body?). As we see on Stela 8 at Seibal, Lintel 5 at Yaxchilan, Aguateca Stela 2, and Dos Pilas Stela 16 (Fig. 18), for this purpose paraphernalia other than the claw-knife (i.e., jaguar-paw mittens and boots, jaguar-claw-studded clubs) may also have been substituted.

An analogy to such behavior can he found in the case of the “leopard-

Fig. 18 Jaguar mittens, boots, and jaguar-claw-studded clubs—ceremonial accessories that may have been used on sacrificial victims to inflict lacerations resembling those of a jaguar attack, (a) Aguateca Stela 2, c.

9.15.4.6.11 2 Chuen 4 Pax. (b) Dos Pilas Stela 16, c. 9.15.4.6.11 2 Chuen 4 Pax. (c) Yaxchilan Lintel 6, c. 9.16.1.8.6 8 Cimi 14 Mac (all after Ian Graham).

men,” a West African cult that flourished in the early 1930s. Members of this secret organization killed their victims by inflicting heavy injuries with multi-pronged metal knives resembling leopard claws.

6)    Serrated Stones. We have seen a large number and a great variety of serrated stone implements, mostly flints (Fig. 19). Some were evidently offensive weapons, serrated to inflict serious damage on the wounded enemy or animal. In other instances, the deep serration made the blades so fragile that they likely lost their practical use and served only as decorative armaments. There are also numerous so-called “eccentric flints,” characterized by their relatively small size and bizarre shape for which even the most imaginative mind can hardly find the intended practical use. In addition to these, we discovered a fair number of very heavy blades, among them several large circular and semilunar serrated flints which appear most suitable to have been used as bone saws. Testing these flints on actual bone, we had absolutely no difficulty cutting through human sternums or ribs within seconds; therefore, there is the definite possibility that they were used in the course of ritual heart removals.

7)    Celts anti Hammers, Excavations throughout the Maya region yielded a virtually unlimited quantity of stone celts, often classified as “axes,” as

Fig. 19 (a) Different serrated stone implements from the Classic period of the northern Peten, (B) Large serrated brown-and-black obsidian dagger, Classic period, probably the northern Peten (Private collection), with a modern surgical saw lor comparison.

Irancis Robicsek and Donald Hales

Fig. 20 Greenstone celt and hammer compared to a modern surgical hammer and osteotome. Private collection.

well as hammer heads (Fig. 20). Most of these implements were made of stone of inferior quality; however, we had the opportunity to examine a lew small- and middle-size celts made of high quality jade. It is most probable that these objects may have been used for carving stone and wood. The possibility, however, still exists that if the Maya intended to use any of them as “osteotomes” to split the sternum, they could have done so.

By grouping these ancient Maya stone objects and comparing them to the armamentarium of the modern heart surgeon, we in no way wish to suggest that we have scientific evidence that they were used in ritual heart removals. An exception to this, however, would be the flat flint blade which has been implicated with certainty as a principal tool of this grim ritual in several Maya and Mixteca-Puebla codices, and also so described in early Colonial documents. The purpose of our exercise in classification has been to demonstrate possibility or at best, probability.

THE SURGICAL ANATOMY OF HEART SACRIFICES

Next to die brain, the best protected vital organ is probably the heart (Figs. 21, 22). It is situated in the lower forward compartment of the gutter (mediastinum) and it rests on the fibrous center of the diaphragm, a muscular plate that separates the cavity of the chest from that of the abdomen. The stable position of the heart is maintained by its own envelope, the pericardium, and is further secured by attachments to the princi-

Fig. 21 Projection of the heart and great vessels across the bony thorax. Drawing by Todd Baxter.

pal blood vessels: the aorta, the pulmonary artery, the caval and the pulmonary veins. In the front center, the heart is shielded by the breast bone (the sternum), in the mid-back by the spinal column (columna vertebralis), and on the sides by the rib cage (costae). This well-protected position makes surgical access to the heart difficult.

The Maya shaman whose task was to remove the heart faced many of the same difficulties, and probably found similar solutions, as today’s surgeon. Today the surgical approach to the heart depends upon the extent of the planned operation and the speed with which it must be accomplished. Since the intention of the Maya priest was neither anatomical reconstruction nor restoration of function, his task was less complex than that of his “colleague” the heart surgeon. It must he said, however, that his task became

Fig. 22 Cross-section of the bony thorax. Drawing by Todd Baxter.

relatively easy only after he had mastered anatomical knowledge and developed proper instruments. We have ample archaeological and ethnohistorical testimony to suggest that he had both, and will look at four procedures for heart extraction that he may have used (Fig. 23).

A) The medical terminology for the most direct approach to the exposure of the heart is “midline axial sternotomy” (Figs. 23A, 24). This operation involves an incision beginning at the suprasternal notch and is carried down to the lower end of the sternum. Unlike his modern counterpart, the thoracic surgeon, the Maya priest-sacrificer probably carried his initial cut not only through the skin and the layers of soft tissues, but with one or two slices he probably came directly to the breastbone. When the sternum is exposed, the surgeon reaches for a rotating or oscillating elec-

Fig. 23 Different ways of anatomical approach to the heart: (a) Axial sternotomy, (b) left anterior thoracotomy, (c) transverse bilateral thoracotomy, and (d) the transabdominal or transdiaphragmatic, approach.

tric saw that he uses to divide the breastbone into narrow halves along the longitudinal axis. If the Maya shaman used the midline axial sternotomy approach, he might have used the more primitive, but effective, surgical technique of simply splitting the sternum with a celt and hammer—both of which are found in abundance at archaeological sites.

What is the likelihood that the ancient Maya utilized this approach? While it is technically possible that he did, practical consideration speaks against it. First of all, the only evidence we came across which suggests that this access to the heart was used during Precolumbian times is a group of solid clay figurines, dating to the Preclassic period, from the present State of Guerrero, now in the Alejandro von Wüthenau collection. Among the numerous female statuettes, we found several with longitudinal gashes on their anterior chests, probably indicating wounds of sacrifice. There is at least one other (male) statuette of the same style and period, now in a

Vrancis Robicsek and Donald Hales

Fig. 24 The anterior midline axial sternotomy approach to expose the heart. Drawing by Todd Baxter.

different private collection, indicating that both sexes were vulnerable to sacrifice in the Preclassic period of Guerrero.

Another reason we feel that the midline axial sternotomy was not used during Precolumbian times is that while it may give the best exposure to the entire heart, it is the most difficult and most time-consuming to perform. If we consider that the victim was probably partially or fully conscious, the efforts of several assistants would not have been sufficient to keep him from struggling and thus preventing the appropriate performance of this delicate procedure.

B) A very rapid and effective way to reach the heart is by the left ulterior intercostal approach (Figs. 23B, 25), often used today for open heart massage to treat cardiac arrest. In this operation, an incision is made beginning at the left edge of the sternum and carried laterally between two (usually the fifth and sixth) ribs; the ribs are then spread, and the hand can be readily inserted into the chest to reach the heart.

Fig. 25 The left anterior intercostal exposure of the heart. Drawing by Todd Baxter.

This approach is probably the quickest and simplest; however, it must have carried several disadvantages for the priest-sacrificer. First, it allows only a limited access and a poor exposure. These difficulties would have been further accentuated by the lack of a “rib spreader,” an instrument readily available in modern surgery. Another shortcoming is that this approach does not give proper access to the heart’s attachments (the great vessels) and the heart would have been literally “torn out” and badly mangled in the process.

While we have no pictorial or sculptural evidence that this method was applied by the Maya during the Classic period, we have several sixteenth-century Colonial records that indicate that it was commonly used at the time of the Conquest. Several Spanish historians describe that the heart was removed through the left side of the chest. Landa (Tozzer 1941: 119) reports: 

At this came the executioner, the Nacom, with a knife of stone, and struck  him with great skill and cruelty a blow between the ribs of his left side  under the nipple, and he at once plunged his hand in there and seized the  heart like a raging tiger and snatched it out alive. . . .

In Thomas Lopez Medel’s Relación (in Tozzer 1941: 221) we find that:

the priest of the master of that ceremony approached and with an extremely sharp  flint, because they had no other knives there, he opened him with all the quickness  in the world on the side of the heart and tore it out and threw it on high, offering it  to their gods.

This left-sided approach is indicated also by the witness quoted by Thompson (1966: 281):

[He] made an opening on the left side of the youth’s heart, and grasped the  heart. . . .

Because all the early Colonial records which give any attention to the technique of heart removal describe the incision as “left-sided,” it is logical to assume that left anterior thoracotomy was the preferred modus operandi of the Maya just before the Conquest as well as during the early Colonial period.

C) A much more suitable approach for ritual heart removal is the bilateral transverse thoracotomy (Figs. 23c, 26, 27), a method of exposure practiced during the early days of open heart surgery. This begins as does the method described in procedure b; however, with this operation, the incision does not stop at the edge of the sternum but crosses it into the right intercostal space. Unlike procedure a, which does not open any, or procedure b, which enters only the left, this method penetrates both pleural cavities—the spaces in which the lungs are located. The lungs of the sacrificial victim (being without the benefit of a modern anesthesia machine to keep them inflated) would have collapsed immediately after the pleural spaces were opened, thus exposing the heart further. At the same time, because the brain is more sensitive to the lack of oxygen than is the heart, the ensuing hypoxia would have rendered the victim conveniently unconscious within three or four minutes. With the victim thus subdued, the priest-sacrificer had still another five to six minutes to remove the palpating heart of the still-living subject. If the victim was kept in an overextended supine position (a posture indicated on several Precolumbian examples) (Fig. 27), transverse sternotomy would have caused a large gaping wound even without the use of retracting instruments. Through such a wound, the contents of the thoracic cavity, especially the heart, could be conveniently reached and rapidly removed. A further benefit from this approach may have been that the bilateral opening of the pleural cavities provided an ample receptacle for the blood pouring out of the great veins after their connection with the heart was severed.

Based upon sculptural and pictorial examples, we believe that this ap-proach was used predominantly, if not exclusively, throughout the entire Maya Classic and up through the late Postclassic into the early Colonial

Fig. 16 Division of the sternum in the course of bilateral transverse thoracotomy using a serrated semilunar flint blade. Drawing by Todd Baxter.

Fig. 27 The lateral view of bilateral transverse thoracotomy exposure of the heart. Drawing by Todd Baxter.

Fig. 28 Solid clay statuettes from the Preclassic period of the area which is now the State of Guerrero. The figurines bear scars, some probably to represent those caused by ritual heart removal. Private collections.

periods. All the victims shown in side-view look as if they have had a pie-shaped chunk of their chests removed. In reality, this type of presentation does not indicate removal of part of the chest wall but simply shows the gaping incision of the transverse sternotomy brought about by the division of the breastbone. This separation was induced by the hyperex-tended posture of the victim. Transverse sternotomy was not exclusive to the Maya, as scenes of heart sacrifice in the Mixtec codices show “the victim stretched over a sacrificial stone with his conqueror actually cutting his heart out” (Pohl n.d.) using the same approach.

n) The last possible method to consider for Maya ritual heart removal is the ii.insdi.iphragm.ilic approach (bigs. 2}i>, 28). To obtain access to the

H'l

Fig. 29 Hieroglyphs representing hands holding three (pronged?) flint knives, (a) Glyphs C3-D6 on a carved conch shell of the Early Classic period (Edwin Pearlman Collection), (b) Glyph 1=5 on a limestone panel from the Bonampak area, c. 9.3.0.0.0 2 Ahau 18 Muan (c.f. Mayer 1980: no. 16). Private collection, (c) Glyph 16 on Altar 5 at Tikal, c. 9.13.11.6.7 13 Manik seating of Xul. (d) Codex-style vase from the Naranjo region. Private collection.

heart with this procedure, the upper abdomen has first to be opened, preferably through an incision connecting the tip of the sternum with the navel. Next, the knife has to cut through the thoraco-abdominal divide, the diaphragm muscle, to gain access to the heart. This approach, like procedure b, has the advantage that the sacrificer only has to sever soft tissues (skin, abdominal fascia, and diaphragm muscle) instead of bone; but it has several shortcomings which, in our opinion, would have made it unlikely to be the method of choice of the Maya priest: 1) With his abdomen open, the struggling and straining victim would have eviscerated his entrails, creating an obstacle hard to overcome during the actual removal of the heart. 2) With this approach, access to the heart would have to be blind groping with the naked hand. This would inevitably lead to gross rending and damage to the heart (even more extensively than by using method B), which would likely have met with the disapproval of the onlookers at the ceremony.

HIEROGLYPHIC REFERENCES

During the course of this study, it seemed appropriate to find out if there were any references to heart sacrifice in Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions. While we have yet to find a verb and/or event glyph that we can be positive refers to heart sacrifice, we did find four examples (Fig. 29) that refer to the tri-pronged claw-knife, which is connected in some way with sacrifice. These appear on an Early Classic period conch shell from the northern Peten (Fig. 29A [glyph D5)), a Bonampak-area panel (Fig. 29B), Tikal Altar 5 (Fig. 29c), and a Late Classic codex-style vase (Fig. 29D).

Of these latter examples, only Tikal Altar 5 (Figs. 17, 29c) portrays an adjacent sacrifice scene that involves the use of the tri-pronged claw-knife. Altar 5 at Tikal portrays two kneeling figures, both in the guise of GIII of the Palenque Triad (otherwise known as Jaguar God of the Underworld, Night Sun, Patron of the Month Uo, and God of Number Seven). The lefthand figure holds the tri-pronged claw-knife, while the figure on the right holds a sacrificial knife partially sheathed in (white?) cloth. Between these two, a human skull rests on a pile of long bones (femurs?)—perhaps the aftermath of the sacrifice.

Another allusion that links the tri-pronged claw-knife to sacrifice (though hieroglyphic in context), is the first example (Fig. 29A). Just prior to the tri-pronged claw-knife glyph (D5) is the “fish-in-hand” glyph or 1714 (C5), which is generally associated with blood sacrifice.

Because only two out of four hieroglyphic examples of the tri-pronged claw-knife can be linked by association to sacrificial events, we cannot as yet be sure that this is a reference to heart sacrifice. Whatever its meaning, the tri-pronged claw-knife hieroglyph definitely appears in contexts that link it with (blood) sacrifice as early as the Early Classic period. There are three ceramic statuettes of rulers that date to the very beginnings of the Early Classic period (specifically Jaguar Paw of Tikal, 8.14.0.0.0 to 8.17.1.4.12), each of which holds a human heart (cf. Fig. 4A). This suggests, as the hieroglyphic evidence may imply, that heart sacrifice was a very ancient phenomenon amongst the Maya.

CONCLUSIONS AND POSTULATES

Human sacrifice in general, and ritual heart removal in particular, were widespread customs among the ancient Maya, but it became commonplace only during the Toltec-Maya period. The ceremony of heart sacrifice itself underwent profound changes as the centuries passed. During the (Classic period it was a lofty ceremony, characterized by the high social standing of the shaman-sacrificer and probably of his victim as well. The

heart removal was performed with the victim in a supine-supported posture, probably using the technique of transverse anterior thoracotomy. In the Late Postclassic period, the number of heart sacrifices increased sharply and the ceremony was characterized by Mexican attributes, such as the flaying of the victim and occasionally the eating of his flesh. At this time, some of the ritual heart removals were performed with the victim in an upright position, using a left anterior intercostal approach. The ceremony persisted for a significant time even after the Spanish Conquest, during which period some of the attributes of Christianity were intermingled with the ancient Maya ritual.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adams, Richard, E. W., et al.

1961 Tikal Reports, Numbers 5-10. The University Museum, University  of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Anton, Ferdinand

1970    Art of the Maya. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York.

Benson, Elizabeth P.

n.d. A New Look at the Gold Disks from the Cenote at Chichen Itza. A  Paper Presented at the 43rd International Congress of Americanists,  Vancouver, 19 79.

Beyer, Herman

1921 El llamado “Calendario Azteca.” Descripción e interpretación del  Cuauhxicalli de la “Casa de los Aguilas.” Verlag Deutscher  Reichsangchöriger, Mexico.

Bloom, Frans, and Oliver La Farge

1927 Tribes and Temples. Tulane University, New Orleans.

Brunner, Hellmut

1965 Das Herzopfer in Altmexico. In Das Herz. (Dr. Karl Thomas  GMBH. Biberach an des Riss): 81—to6.

Clarkson, Persis B.

1978 Classic Maya Pictorial Ceramics: A Survey of Content and Theme.  In Papers on the Economy and Architecture of the Classic Maya  (Raymond Sidrys, ed.): 86-141. Monograph 8, Institute of Archaeology,  University of California at Los Angeles.

Coe, Michael D.

1973 The Maya Scribe and His World. The Grolier Club, New York.

1975 Classic Maya Pottery at Dumbarton Oaks. Dumbarton Oaks,  Washington.

Coe, William R., and Shook Edwin M.

1961 The Carved Lintels of Tikal. Tikal Report 6. The University  Museum, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Edmonson, Munro S.

1971    The Book of Counsel: The Popol Vuh of the Quiche Maya of  Guatemala. Middle American Research Institute, Publication 35. Tulane  University, New Orleans.

Graham, Ian

1967 Archaeological Explorations in El Peten, Guatemala. Middle  American Research Institute, Publication 33. Tulane University, New  Orleans.

1977 Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions. Vol. 3, part 1,  Yaxchilan. Pca-

body Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University,  Cambridge.

Haberland, Wolfgang

1954 The Golden Battle Discs of Chichen Itza. Ethnos 19: 94—104.

JORALEMON, DAVID

1974    Ritual Blood Sacrifice Among the Ancient Maya: Part I. Primera  Mesa Redonda de Palenque, Part II (Merle Greene Robertson, ed.): 59-75.  Robert Louis Stevenson School, Pebble Beach, California.

Lothrop, Samuel Kirkland

1952 Metals from the Cenote of Sacrifice, Chichen Itza, Yucatan.  Memoirs of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology 10  (2). Harvard University, Cambridge.

Maler, Teobert

1908 Explorations in the Department of Peten, Guatemala, and  Adjacent Regions. Topoxte; Yaxha; Benque Viejo; Naranjo. Memoirs of  the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology 4 (2). Harvard  University, Cambridge.

Mayer, Karl Herbert

1980 Maya Monuments: Sculptures of Unknown Provenance in the  United States. Acoma Books, Ramona, California.

Morley, Sylvanus G.

1956 The Ancient Maya. 3rd ed. Stanford University Press, Stanford.

Pohl, John M. D.

n.d. The Eight Mixtec Historical Manuscripts with a Discussion of the  Scenes of Human Sacrifice. Manuscript, 1976.

Proskouriakoff, Tatiana

1950 A Study of Classic Maya Sculpture. Carnegie Institution of  Washington, Publication 593.

Relación de Valladolid

1900 Relación de Valladolid. In Colección de documentos inéditos ... de  ultramar, 2nd ser., 13: 3-40. Madrid.

Robicsek, Francis

1972 Copán. Home of the Mayan Gods. Museum of the American  Indian.

1975    A Study in Maya Art and History: The Mat Symbol. Museum  of the American Indian, New York.

1978 'The Smoking Gods: Tobacco in Maya Art, History and Religion.  University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.

1980 Archeological Finds of Classic Maya Weaponry in Guatemala. La  antropología americanista en la actualidad: 423-444. Mexicanos Unidos.  Mexico.

Robicsek, Francis, and Donald M. Hales

1981 The Maya Book of the Dead. The Ceramic Codex. University of  Oklahoma Press, Norman.

Scholes, France V., and Eleanor B. Adams

1938 Don Diego Quijada, Alcalde Mayor de Yucatan, 1561-1565.  Documentos sacados de los Archivos de España 1. Antigua Librería  Robredo, de Jose Porrúa e Hijos, Mexico.

Seler, Eduard

1899 Die achtzehn Jahrefeste der Mexikaner (Erste Hälfte). Veröffent- lichungen aus dem Königlichen Museum für Völkerkunde 4: 67-204.  Berlin.

Sheets, Payson

1981 Author Review. Natural History 90 (8): 20

Thompson, J. Eric S.

1966 The Rise and Fall of Maya Civilization. 2nd ed. University of  Oklahoma Press, Norman.

1970 Maya History and Religion. University of Oklahoma Press,  Norman.

Tozzer, Alfred M.

1941 Landa’s Relación de las cosas de Yucatán. Papers of the Peabody  Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology 18. Harvard  University, Cambridge.

Willard, Theodore A.

1926 The City of the Sacred Well. The Century Company, New York.

Human Sacrifice in the Books of Chilam Balam of Tizimin and Chumayel

MUNRO S. EDMONSON

TULANE UNIVERSITY

Murder, whether ritual or not, has an intrinsic fascination. My topic in this paper is ritual murder among the Mayas of Yucatan from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. To paraphrase an old journalistic adage, it is my intention to come to grips with the question: when did who do what to whom and where and how and why?

A logically prior question is of course: how do I know? I shall confine myself largely to what I believe to be implied or stated in the Books of Chilam Balam of Tizimin and Chumayel. The data provided by these Books are severely flawed by ambiguities: linguistic, literary, cultural, and historical. Because I am working from recently completed English translations of the texts, poetically parsed and almost completely annotated, I have access to materials not yet published in 1979 (Edmonson 1982, n.d.a). My references, therefore, must be to the folio pages of the original manuscripts—these being, of course, in Yucatecan Maya but with a readily traceable relationship to the published translations of Alfredo Barrera Vásquez (1948) and Ralph Roys (1967). (For this purpose the Tizimin is coded as T and the Chumayel as C.)

I am persuaded that the Books of Chilam Balam are like a series of ritual telegrams from the Maya past—not only brief but also coded. I think I have decoded them in two respects: I have reordered each separable passage in both Books and have dated them in lineal European time, and I have attempted a translation of the metaphoric content of their texts. Within the format and scope of this paper, I cannot offer documentation on these two essential points; hence, pending publication of my fully annotated texts, I will refer to the original manuscripts.

WHEN

In Mayan languages, the first element in every sentence is adverbial: mode, time, continuity, relationship, and the like. Even in larger units of Mayan discourse, the question of time is generally disposed of first. In the Books of Chilam Balam, the handling of time is both explicit and expert, and most of the individual passages begin with a date. In relation to human sacrifice it is convenient to divide the evidence into periods: Classic (692-948), Postclassic (948-1539), and Colonial (1539-1848).

Classic

The earliest possible references to human sacrifice in the Books are oblique and uncertain. Reference is made to the “destruction” of cities: Chichen Itza in 889 (TI8v) or 948 (C74). Champoton in 1204 (TI8v; C75), and Mayapan in 1452 (TI9r; C76). Such destructions appear to have been timed to the ending of the may, the 13-katun cycle, and principally to the katun 8 Ahau. The destructions of Champoton and Mayapan were accompanied by the destruction of people, but it is only in the latter case that sacrifice appears to be specified (TI3r). There seems to have been some disagreement about the end of the may, some texts identifying it with 8 Ahau and others with 4 Ahau or 13 Ahau. Furthermore, the destruction did not necessarily coincide precisely with the katun ending. According to the Book of Mani, Mayapan fell in 1451, ten years before the end of 8 Ahau in 1461.

Postclassic

From the katun of the fall of Mayapan to that of the beginning of the Caste War, the Books include materials on every katun. (For a summary romp through these materials, see Edmonson 1978.) All but five of these nineteen katuns are mentioned as having katun ceremonies, but references to sacrifice are highly elliptical and vague. For the period before the Conquest it is reasonable to infer katun ending ceremonies accompanied by human sacrifice for four of the five katuns. There is no documentation for 2 Ahau, which ended in 1520.

Colonial

After the Mayapan calendar reform of 1539 (Edmonson 1976), it was the beginning of the katun that was celebrated, and there are references to the ceremonies for most of the katuns. In the last katun, 11,Ahau (1824), it is explicit that the sacrifices were of animals, candles, and flowers (T7V, 11r; C64).

The katun was not necessarily the only cycle punctuated by ceremonies and sacrifices. Not only were there ho tun, lahun tun, and ho lahun tun rites marking the quarter, half, and three-quarter points of the katun; there were also ceremonies for the 20-day uinal, the 65-day quarter tzol kin, the 365-day hah, and the 52-year kin tun y abil. References to ceremonies or even to sacrifice within a given katun thus cannot safely be assumed to refer to the katun as such. While the ceremonial calendar throughout Yucatan involved a complex interlocking of these various cycles, the Itza in the eastern part of the peninsula appeared to lay the greatest stress on the katun ceremonies, while the Xiu in the west placed a complementary emphasis on the yearbearer cult and the ritual of the hab.

WHO

Maya sacrifices were performed by the priests. But both before and after the Conquest, Maya priesthood was complex. The most general order of priesthood was that of the sun priest or day diviner (ah kin), and membership in this order was prerequisite to any higher office. Calendar divination was at the center of the sun priest’s office, although a number of other forms of divination were also practiced. Diviners and curers (ah men), who were often the same people, were not necessarily nobles, but nobility of birth as well as extensive training were required for advancement to the higher ranks of priesthood. Within each town there were priests of the four (sometimes five) directions, who were identified with the directional colors and gods (Ba Cabs), and with the yearbearers (can hel), burners (ah toc), and other quadripartite conceptions. There were also numeral priests, presumably thirteen of them, and priests of the high god cults, such as Kukul Can and Itzam Na. The high priest of the community was the hal ach uinic or governor.

Men who had served in the higher priesthoods were considered to be sages (ah miatz), and were responsible for the proper operation of the calendar. They held occasional councils, somewhat like those of the modern Catholic Church, to resolve calendrical and theological issues (T7V). Councils of this sort were held at Mayapan (T11r), Merida (T16r), and Chichen Itza (T11r) in the sixteenth century and probably at Valladolid (T18r) in the eighteenth.

The highest order of the priesthood was that of the Jaguar (Balam), sometimes also called the Rattlesnake (Ahau Can) (T13r), or sun priest of the cycle (ah kin may) (T10r), who was priest of the katun for the whole country. He was assisted by a Spokesman (Chilam), who supervised land titles, tribute, and the examination of public officials.

It appears that the direction priests might have served as the sacrificial

priests of the towns, while the Jaguar was the sacrificial priest for the whole country. The former rotated in office with the changing yearbearers, while the latter was supposed to serve for an entire katun. Presumably, too, the direction priests, the four Honored Ones (can tzicnal) (T4r), took charge of the year ceremonies, while the Jaguar officiated at those of the katun. It is not clear that human sacrifice occurred except in relation to the katun.

WHAT

The Books record a period of almost continual violence in Yucatecan history. Much of this is described in metaphoric language, and it is not easy to differentiate ritual murder from acts of warfare or penitential rites. Death is a major theme of the Books as a whole; it occurs by famine (C73), disease (T22r), decapitation (C65), stabbing (T12v, 13r), hanging (T12v), knifing (T26r), flaying (T4V), clubbing (C12), shooting both with arrows (T13r) and guns (T8r), drowning (C10), burning (T17V), throat cutting (T4V, 11r, 11v, I2v, 13r, 14r 15V, I7r, 17V, I9v), and suicide (T22v). There are also occasional references to cannibalism (T23r), witchcraft (T16v), and attacks of wild animals (T13r).

Sacrifice is rarely referred to directly in these texts, and even when it is, it may turn out to refer to ritual offering of incense, candles, flowers, food, and the like, principally by burning. Animal sacrifice is also mentioned (T7V, 11r; C64), and so is the well known Maya practice of penitential blood-letting (Tiiv, 12r). Almost all apparent references to human sacrifice, on the other hand, are figurative, and correspondingly problematic.

One of the commonest expressions I have read as a reference to sacrifice is ‘painless death’ {ma ya cimlal) (C73, 76, 79, 95, 103; T5V, 6v, 7r, 7v, 11r, 11v, 13r, 14r, 14V, 15V, I7r, 18r, 21v). Other translators have read this as ‘Maya death’ and interpreted it as an unidentified disease. It is frequently paired with the expression kin tun y abil, which I read as ‘day 360-days year’, hence Calendar Round, but which has been alternatively read as ‘heat stone illness’ and thus as another disease (C12, 64, 94, 97; TI3r). Other similarly oblique references include lomol nicte ‘flower stabbing’ (T12v), chac tun num ya ‘red stone of suffering’ (T4V, 11r, I2v, 13, 14V, I7r, 19V) or hul yax che ‘appearance of the ceiba’ (C3; T12V).

Not all references to sacrifice are this obscure. There is explicit mention of the brain sacrifice (T12r), chest knife (T6v), heart sacrifice (T11v), breast sacrifice (T12r), and water sacrifice (T1v). Decapitation, flaying, throat cutting, and cannibalism appear to be likely references to human sacrifice confirmed by other sources. Landa says that the killing of Xib Chac by Can Ul at Izamal in 8 Ahau (1461) was by arrow sacrifice (Tozzer 1941: 35). This is neither confirmed nor denied by the Books of Chilam Balam. Nonetheless, the Books appear to be in general agreement with our other sources on the nature and manner of Maya sacrifice.

WHOM

The fall of Mayapan in the middle fifteenth century marked the end of Yucatecan Maya unity. From that time forward the peninsula was divided into two quite separate religious, and hence political systems, one centered on Merida and dominated by the Xiu, and the other nominally centered in ruined Mayapan but in reality based principally on the towns east of there and dominated by the Itza. Merida and Mayapan were the seats of the cycle (may at) (C73, 99; T7V), and became the symbolic foci of an ongoing civil war.

The coming of the Spaniards complicated the politics of Yucatan, but had surprisingly little impact upon the Maya system as such. The Xiu generally turned Christian, in part to acquire allies against the still-pagan Itza. But in both the west and the east, the peasants and merchants were increasingly aligned against the lords. Neither wished to pay Spanish taxes and Maya tribute at the same time. So they took to the woods, formed military companies with animal names, and carried on guerrilla warfare. There were, therefore, plenty of captives for sacrifice.

Among the prime victims of sacrifice from the fall of Mayapan on were the Jaguars, lords of the katun (T15V). Sometimes they were legitimate heirs to the older aristocracy; sometimes they were low-born usurpers. Very few Jaguars completed their terms of office, and even those who did were often sacrificed once they were out of power. Other lords were frequent victims as well.

By the end of 1 Ahau (1638) Christian Merida got out of the Jaguar business. Before that, in 1611, even the Itza Jaguar had become Christian. By 10 Ahau (1677) the military companies had disbanded, and reports of human sacrifice declined rapidly, ceasing altogether in the eighteenth century.

WHERE

Sacrificial ceremonies were often held at the seat of the cycle, and are specifically attested to for Mayapan and Merida both before and after the Conquest. Direct evidence is lacking for earlier cycle seats, but it seems very likely that sacrifices were also performed at Chichen Itza, Champoton, Uxmal, Valladolid, Bacalar, Tayasal, and other such centers even in the Colonial period. There is some suggestion in the data that the cycle seat was the preferred location for katun ceremonies.

Sacrifices were also held in the towns serving as seats of the katun, certainly including Izamal, Tizimin, and Emal, and very likely Tihosuco, Coba, Zotz’il, Zuyua, Teabo, and Chable as well. There is no reason to suppose that sacrifices were confined to these towns, and it is very likely that every substantial community regularly performed yearbearer ceremonies, and that these may have involved sacrifices. The Books, however, do not say so.

Some sacrificial ceremonies were held in the plaza in the center of the town. The plaza was considered the navel of the world, the crossroads of the four directions. There was an altar, presumably on a platform, holding the “red stone of sacrifice.” Sacrifices were also performed on the pyramids that framed the plaza, and katun ceremonies were oriented to the memorial monuments (natabal) or stelae that commemorated the katuns (C8), which were commonly placed before the pyramids. Virtually every town had its sacred well or cenote. “Wells and springs,” in fact, is the usual way of referring to towns and villages in the poetic idiom of the Books (T1v), and the wells, at least, were frequent sites for sacrifice; often there are platform altars at the edges of the wells (C10). Towns of any importance also had a sacred grove (tzucub te) (T18v), dominated by at least one large ceiba tree (yax che), and located either near the center of the town or altogether outside it. Ceremonies were frequently conducted “behind the ceiba,” an expression which appears in itself to refer to sacrifice (T12v).

Detached from the centers of population there are and were isolated shrines, often in caves, where ritual offerings were made. There are no clear indications, however, that these included human sacrifice. There are references to the peasant practice of hiding in the woods during the recurrent times of troubles, and I have read these references to rural violence as an aspect of warfare rather than of sacrifice.

HOW

We have no circumstantial description of the manner in which the sacrificial rites were conducted. The Books do include, on the other hand, multiple references to fragments of the ritual, dress and insignia of the priests, and the act of sacrifice itself.

As the time approached for the folding of the katun, marking the end of one katun and the beginning of the next, and hence the end of the rule of one Jaguar and the accession of his successor, elaborate preparations were made. The plazas and temples were swept and decorated (T11r). The “remainder of food and water” was collected under the charge of the outgoing Jaguar, the “priest of the remainder” (T1v). These were appa-

rently ceremonial offerings of food and drink. The priests then counted the katun with markers of some sort which were placed in a cask. When the cask was full the katun was said to be “full swollen” (C91), and it was time to end it. The plate and bowl of the katun (T1r) may have had something to do with this count. The count was then publicized in a ritual procession called the “pacing of the katun” (T11r), apparently oriented to the four directions and executed counterclockwise (T11v). The katun was then said to be squared (T19V) by the completion of its fourth quarter, symbolized spatially by the four-sided pyramid and the procession.

The outgoing Jaguar presumably took his place in state on his mat and throne (T12r), dressed in a jaguar- and rattlesnake-skin robe, with his face “tied” (i.e. masked) (T11v), and bearing on a tumpline the symbolic “burden” of the katun. The other priests took their places in rank order around him. The katun monument had presumably already been erected, but it and the idols were shrouded. This was the “posting” of the katun (T11v). All of the priests were dressed and/or masked as representations of the gods. Prayers were offered (we have some fragmentary examples from other sources), the “word of the katun” was announced by the Spokesman—a prophecy he had prepared five years before of the nature of the coming katun. (The Books do contain some of these prophecies: C103-107.) All of these activities and those to come were punctuated by dancing (T4r) and music (T13r)—trumpets, rattles, flutes, drums, and singing.

The incoming Jaguar received the symbols of the katun: the robes, mask, cup, plate, and burden, and probably other insignia as well. (Illustrations of the lords of the katun in the Chumayel always show a crown, hat, or headdress of some sort [for example see Roys 1967: 93].) The idols and katun monument were presumably unshrouded to witness this act and the sacrifice to follow, and other priesthoods were announced and changed, particularly that of the new Spokesman.

The outgoing Jaguar mourned (T5V). His face was said to be flattened. Perhaps this was symbolized by some treatment of his mask, but it could also be related to the defacement of Classic katun monuments at the time of the destruction of the cycle. He had good reason to mourn, for frequently he was the designated sacrificial victim.

The new Jaguar performed the sacrifice of “painless death.” It is possible that the victim was, in fact, anaesthetized, either by balche, the Maya fermented honey drink, or by hallucinogens, or both. Using the flint chest knife reserved for this purpose (T6v), the Jaguar bent the victim backward (“bending” is a frequent reference to sacrifice in the Books, for example T3V) over the red stone of sacrifice, opened his chest and removed his heart. The heart and blood were offered to the gods. Some sacrifices

involved flaying (T4.V) the victim, and some may have involved ritual cannibalism (T23r). A proper Maya ritual demands ceremonial feasting and drinking, and the “food and drink” of the katun symbolize its essential character (T18r). The mood of the ceremony could hardly have been gay—there are references to weeping and lamentation on the part of the incoming administration.

The newly installed Jaguar might also have good reason for lamentation. Following his installation, his first duty was a ceremonial circuit (C3-13) of the towns of his jurisdiction for the ceremonies of confirming titles to land and offices and the collection of tribute, activities which were sufficiently unpopular to be downright dangerous, if not fatal. Assisted by his Spokesman and other priests, he travelled about the country examining the governors of towns and asserting his authority. His progression was often as military as it was ceremonial, and is referred to as “the flattening of the land” (T11v). But such was the burden of the katun.

The evidence of the Books does not rule out the occurrence of human sacrifice in relation to the yearbearer ceremonies, but neither does it document it. While yearbearer sacrifices are attested in other Maya cultures, it is also true that these lacked the katun as a possible alternative focus. The richness of the references to katun ritual, and the explicitness of some linkages of the katun to human sacrifice, stand in marked contrast to the treatment of other cycles in the Books. I can find no documentation of yearbearer sacrifices of people, and no details of yearbearer ritual that suggest it: I conclude that it did not happen: Yucatecan human sacrifice was tied to the katun.

WHY

The creation myth of the Yucatecan Maya differs dramatically from the widespread Middle American mythological identification of human life with corn. The Yucatecans identify man directly with time itself. In a characteristically subtle bit of word play, the invention of the counting of time—the creation of the 20-day uinal—is equated with the creation of the creature of 20 digits, uinic (‘man, twenty’):

What is to be said

When a man is seen on the road? (C60; Edmonson 1970)

The Yucatecan answer to this eternal riddle is: sentence him to regeneration, whether man (uinic) or cycle (uinal).

The mystical significance of the numeral 20 is general to Middle America, and the association of the name of the numeral with man is general at least to the Maya peoples. Only the Yucatecans pursued the numerology of the sacred 20 to the achievement of a Long Count calendar based on the

katun. It was a dazzling achievement by any standard, and it does not seem remarkable that it dazzled the Yucatecans themselves.

It is of more than casual interest that the homonomy of ‘twenty’ and ‘man’ (uinic) is repeated in the name of the katun, since that word means both 20 tuns (7200 days) and ‘warriors’ or ‘war’. It is clear in the Books that the katuns not only chronicled the wars of Yucatan but actually caused them. The very existence of the lordship of the katun provided at one and the same time the highest integration of legitimate political and religious authority and by the same token the prime target for rivalry and the rhetoric of conflict. And like the lordships, the wars of Yucatan were predicted and controlled by the katun cycle (T13r).

The Books imply with some clarity that the thirteen katun cycle—the may—controlled the fate of dynasties in the major cities of Classic times and continued to do so in the Postclassic down to the fall of Mayapan. But the extrapolation of The Mayan System from the Books of Chilam Balam remains both difficult and questionable. Acculturational influences from Central Mexico throughout the Preconquest period are blended with Spanish influences thereafter, and documenting the origin and development of particular features will be a long hard job, involving other lines of evidence besides the Colonial texts.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barrera VÁsquez, Alfredo

1948 El Libro de los libros de Chilam Balam. Fondo de Cultura  Economica, Mexico.

Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel

n.d. (Original in Princeton University Library. I have used Gordon  1913. See also Roys 1967.)

Book of Chilam Balam of Mani

n.d. (Original lost. I have used the copy in Latin American  Library, ,Tu-lane University, New Orleans.)

Book of Chilam Balam of Tizimin

n.d. (Original in National Archives in Mexico City. I have used the  copy in Latin American Library, Tulane University, New Orleans.)

Chumayel (see Book )

Edmonson, Munro S.

1970 The Princeton Codex of the Book of Chilam Balam of  Chumayel. Princeton University Library Chronicle 32: 37-42

 1977    The Mayan Calendar Reform of 11.16.0.0.0. Current   Anthropology 17: 7I3-7I7.

 1978    The History of the Itza Maya. In Codex Wauchope: a   Tribute Roll (Marco Giardino, Barbara Edmonson, and Winifred   Creamer, eds.): 61-63. Human Mosaic 12. New Orleans.

1982 The Ancient Future of the Itza: the Book of Chilam Balam of  Tizimin. University of Texas Press, Austin, n.d.a Heaven Born  Merida and Its Destiny: the Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel.  (In press.)

Gordon, G. B.

1913 The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel. Pennsylvania  University Museum, Publications in Anthropology 5. Philadelphia.

Mani (see Book)

Roys, Ralph L.

1967 The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel. University of  Oklahoma Press, Norman.

Tizimin (see Book)

Tozzer, Alfred M.

1941 Landa’s Relation de las cosas de Yucatan. Papers of the  Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology 18.  Harvard University, Cambridge.

In Search of the Mountain of Foam: Human Sacrifice in Eastern Mesoamerica

S. JEFFREY K. WILKERSON

INSTITUTE FOR CULTURAL ECOLOGY OF THE TROPICS

WHEN JUAN DE Grijalva and his small fleet arrived in 1518 at an island in the “harbour and bay of San Juan” on the Veracruz coast, they found hastily abandoned temples and

five Indians sacrificed that night, they were open in the chests and the arms and thighs cut off, and the walls of the houses covered with blood. They named the spot the Isle of Sacrifices¹ (Díaz del Castillo 1964: 22). In the first letter of Cortes to Charles V of Spain, written at Villa Rica de la Veracruz in the summer of the following year, the ritual of human sacrifice in the region is described further:²

Whenever they wish to beg anything of their idols, in order that their petition may find more acceptance, they take large numbers of boys and girls and even of grown men and women and tear out their heart and bowels while still alive, burning them in the presence of those idols, and offering the smoke of such burning as a pleasant sacrifice. . . .

Not only was surprise expressed at the ritual itself, but also at the frequency: The Indians perform this ceremony so frequently that, as we are informed and have in part seen, . . . there is no year passes in which they do not thus kill and sacrifice fifty souls in every such temple, and the practice is general from the Island of Cozumel to the region in which we have now settled. (Cortes 1928: 23-24)

The reference to the common nature of rituals involving human sacrifice throughout the lowlands is significant, and one that can be verified by

¹The island today has retained its colonial designation of “Isla de Sacrificios”; it is just south of the fortress San Juan de Ulua.

²The surviving first letter is not the original written by Cortes but one thought to be modeled upon it by the cabildo of the newly found town of Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz (Alcala 1963: XII—XV). For purposes of this discussion the precise authorship is not essential, as 1) it reflects eye witness accounts, and 2) is a view of coastal religious rituals before the August 1519 march inland and the exposure to even more dramatic practices.

S. Jeffrey K. Wilkerson

Fig. 1 Eastern Mesoamerica

analysis of architectural and ethnohistorical sources for the Late Postclassic period (c. A.d. 1300-1520) in Veracruz.

At the time of European contact there was a strong Central Mexican model for religious activities all along the coast, especially within, and in proximity to, the various subject provinces of the Aztec tribute state.3 Although strongest, perhaps, in regions of Nahuatl and Nahua speakers in southern and central Veracruz, as well as in the Sierra Madre Oriental, the pattern had even wider distribution. Totonac centers, at least in the coastal plain, participated in such rituals, as did the Huastecs in north-central Veracruz. A possible focus of variation to the general pattern was the conservative Huastec population in the north Gulf area (Fig. 1). Even here, however, the attitudes toward sacrifice were related to those of peoples dominated by the Mexica.

³These provinces are: Ctziocoac, Tuxpan, Tlalauhquitepec, Cuetlaxtlan, Quauhtochco, Tochtepec. Their boundaries have been tentatively located by Barlow (1949).

Fig. 2 The tzompantli at Zempoala as seen by Don Francisco Paso y Troncoso in 1891 (after Galindo y Villa 1912: lam. 17).

Apart from the accounts of early witnesses, human sacrifice in the eastern lowlands is amply demonstrated by the surviving skull racks (tzompantli) and their depictions in lienzos. The best-preserved example is in south-central Veracruz. There, the major Totonac city of Zempoala had a large and elaborate rack to the east of the major temple compound (Fig. 2). Known today as the Temple of the Faces,⁴ it has a U-shaped masonry wall opening eastward, atop a two-storied platform. The wooden superstructure for human skulls would have risen from the top. The recessed tableros of the upper wall were, until recently, adorned with fired clay skulls set in rows on both the interior and exterior. By one calculation (Melgarejo Vivanco 1966) the skulls, originally painted with white lime, may have numbered as many as 1,340. They were surrounded by a series of large polychrome glyphs, which were not depicted in regional style, but rather in the international, or multi-ethnic, Mixteca-Puebla style of the

⁴The building has had several names. It was originally designated Temple G by Strebel in his 1883 description (1884: 17-20, tafel iv, v). Later, in 1905, it was labeled Temple C by Fewkes (1907: 239-242). Its present title of “Templo de las Caritas” or “Templo de las Calaveras” was given by Paso y Troncoso who examined the site in 1891-1892 and whose notes were published by Galindo y Villa in 1912. Subsequent research by Garda Payón (1949) and Melgarejo Vivanco (1966) has standardized this nomenclature.

Central Mexican codices. Shown repeatedly are forms of the moon and Venus, and, in a single case, the sun.

These glyphs conform to the celestial conceptualization typical of Postclassic religion, particularly of the plateau regions. The sun especially is associated with sacrificial rituals in the highlands (Caso 1954). The cult of Venus, or Venus-Quetzalcoatl, however, may be of considerable antiquity on the Gulf Coast.⁵ The ehecatlcoxcatl, or “wind jewel,” associated with first the wind god Ehecatl and then Quetzalcoatl, appears as a ceramic decoration as early as 1000 b.c. in north-central Veracruz. As we will examine shortly, human sacrifice associated with this cult can be verified in the Late Classic period (c. a.d. 600-1000). Although I have not identified all the lunar relationships to sacrifice on the Coast, the glyph depicted at Zempoala contains a flint knife instead of the more common rabbit. One is reminded of the dismembered Coyolxauhqui excavated at the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan and Bernal Diaz’s description of dismembered bodies on the Isle of Sacrifices.

Elsewhere the presence of skull racks can be verified through documentation. The well-preserved Lienzos de Tuxpan depict a tzompantli on the north side of the Tuxpan River in the upper portion of north-central Veracruz.⁶ Painted on cotton cloth, one of the fifteenth-century lienzos shows a series of buildings. One is clearly a skull rack (Figs. 3, 4).⁷

The size and ornate nature of the tzompantli at Zempoala clearly denotes its significance, but its location outside the major walled temple precinct may indicate that in the eyes of local Totonacs some sacrificial rituals were imposed on them by outside influences. Las Casas, in fact, states that the Aztecs introduced human sacrifice to the Totonacs and that “from them they learned to have many gods” (1967: 211). However, the generalized domination of coastal religion by tenets of highland origin is also shown in the abundance of polychrome pottery in the “codex style” throughout Zempoala.

The exact nature of the rituals that required human sacrifice in this time period in Veracruz are unclear. The close, if not identical, similarities of the Calendar Round and deities to those found in the highlands suggest that both fixed and movable feasts were the same, and that their associated

⁵In fact, Medellin, who excavated the Isle of Sacrifices at Veracruz (1955: 100), considers the island to have been dedicated to this cult.

⁶Although generally thought to be copies of Prehispanic originals, I believe two of these five lienzos are Precolumbian, each being painted on three tieras of cotton cloth of width appropriate for a back-strap loom.

⁷Another possible tzompantli is depicted in the mid-sixteenth century Codice Misantla (Mena 1911: láms. viii, ix). Its ladderlike appearance is hard to interpret as anything but a skull rack. The features of the codice, actually a lienzo, would place it not far from Zempoala.

rituals could not be significantly different. This basic similarity of the calendar is borne out by studies of architectural and mural remains at Zempoala (Garda Payón 1949; Melgarejo Vivanco 1966) and sixteenth-century observations. One such description took place in November 1547.

At that time, the Franciscan Andres de Olmos held an inquiry in the Sierra de Puebla and the Sierra de Veracruz concerning the cacique of Matatlan who had just publicly celebrated the feast of Panquetzaliztli. Among the Aztecs this feast was associated with the god of war (Vaillant 1956) and included human sacrifice. No such sacrifice was proven in the inquiry by Olmos, but the cacique was nevertheless charged before the Inquisition for idolatrous behavior (1912).

The actual scale of human sacrifice in the eastern lowlands is difficult to reconstruct from purely documentary evidence. This is in large part due to the fact that once the army of conquest moved inland, attention was not again directed toward coastal peoples and their lifestyles until the subjugation of the province of Panuco in 1522-1523. By that time, the grandeur of Tenochtitlan and its rituals overshadowed any of the few opportunities for calm observation during the pitched military campaigns. In fact, warfare is generally the context for most references to human sacrifice among the Huastecs. Bernardino de Sahagún, basing his information on Aztec informants, indicates that the Huastecs decapitated prisoners taken in war (1956, 3: 203). Bernal Díaz describes the skinned and preserved remains of

the Spaniards, from the earlier Pineda expedition, found by Cortes in a temple during his march along the Rio Panuco (1964: 354). The often immediate sacrifice of prisoners by the Huastecs is a practice recurrent throughout descriptions of the conquest of the province of Panuco and various succeeding revolts (Chipman 1967; Toussaint 1948). The tenacious resistance of the Huastecs to domination was recognized by the Aztecs who held a special dislike for them. The Huastecs were often considered optimum sacrifices for specific rituals, such as the feast of Talacaxipeualiztli, where one or more individuals were flayed (Duran 1967, 1; 175-179), and for mass sacrifices commemorating the construction of temples. Flaying, as a method of sacrifice, was practiced among the Huastecs and may have originated on the Gulf Coast.

A precise picture of the Postclassic rituals involving human sacrifice, and their significance in the Gulf Coast region, is extremely difficult to determine. Although the first wide-eyed European accounts of rituals present useful descriptions, Spanish interest soon turned inland. The coastal regions basically became transit areas to the main activities in Central Mexico. By the time limited secular and ecclesiastical interest once more focused on the Coast (under the vice-regal administration of Antonio de Mendoza), another event had taken place to make information retrieval even more difficult. Following Cortes’s victory over Navarez’s punitive expedition in 1520, one of the accompanying slaves was found to be sick with smallpox. The ensuing epidemic had a drastic impact on the coastal populations. Perhaps aggravated by climatic parameters, the effect of the repeated epidemics of first smallpox, and then measles, was catastrophic. Archaeological and documentary evidence suggest population drops of as much as ninety percent for some coastal areas in the sixty years following the Conquest (Wilkerson n.d.b, 1979; Kelly and Palerm 1952). This rapid change in population size brought about wholesale disruption of social units and cultural practices in the lowlands.⁸ Coupled with further population movement as the remnant groups fled Spanish attempts at repartimiento and congregation, ritual life invariably was substantially modified and rarely recorded by the few literate Spaniards in the tropical zone. We have no knowledge of how religion in the region coped with the disaster nor when human sacrifice ceased.

In spite of the varied problems of the recorded evidence it is possible to see certain trends for the last Postclassic in eastern Mesoamerica. The

⁸The city and capital of Zempoala, so prominent in the first days of the Conquest and thought to have a population of at least 75,000, was totally abandoned by the end of the century. Tuzapan, a major fortified city in north-central Veracruz, was abandoned in 1576 (Wilkerson 1979).

combined impression of the architectural and documentary data is that the coastal peoples participated, if not completely then certainly effectively, in the dynamic Postclassic expansion of ritual human sacrifice. Single and multiple sacrifice was frequent, but mass sacrifice on the Mexican model was, insofar as our sources indicate, not practiced.

Sacrifice by removal of the heart was common in south-central Veracruz and decapitation frequent in the Huasteca. Skull racks occurred, but were not given the prominence they had in the highlands. Warfare led to sacrifice of prisoners, especially among the Huastecs. Nevertheless, there is no present evidence for the highland “flowered war,” where the taking of prisoners was the motivating impulse. The splattering of blood was an integral part of some ceremonies, as it is today with bird sacrifice in the sierras of Puebla and Veracruz. Human sacrifice in rituals celebrating feasts of the moon, sun, Venus, and Xipe Totec, is implied by remains in central Veracruz. While these rituals appear to be similar to those amply described for the Aztecs, a closer look at earlier time periods will show considerable antiquity for some sacrificial rituals and practices found in the Postclassic period.

FLAYING AND THE CULT OF XIPE

Xipe, a deity associated with agricultural rejuvenation rituals at the time of the Aztecs, may have considerable time depth in south-central Veracruz. As early as the end of the Late Formative period, handmade figurines with bucal masks of painted asphalt are common. These anthropomorphic figures, male and female, are shown in various ritual postures. That the masks represent flayed skin is entirely consistent with later descriptions of the Xipe ritual. By Early Classic times many of the figurines are mold-made (Medellin 1960: 20—29), and distribution may be wider in the sub-area known as the Mixtequilla. In the Late Classic there appears to be a general geographic expansion of the cult, as the bucal masks appear on the distinct Nopiloa figurines of larger size, as well as at a broader range of sites to the north.⁹

During the Early Postclassic period there is considerable expansion of the cult and modification of the ritual. Both statuary ceramic figures, as at Piedras Negras in the Mixtequilla, and a stone sculpture at Castillo de Teayo10 in the north-central Veracruz, now show the wearing of the entire skin of the sacrificial victims. By this time the ritual appears to have taken

⁹As at Chachalacas on the coast near Zempoala (Garda Payón 1951).

¹⁰There is some debate whether a number of the sculptures at Castillo de Teayo, which are generally assigned to the Early Postclassic, may date to Aztec times. The sculpture that concerns us here is equally useful to our discussion in either time frame.

on the essential aspects described for the movable feast of Xipe in the chronicles for the Valley of Mexico and depicted in Mexica sculpture. It continued to be practiced in Veracruz, at least among the Huastecs, as confirmed by the preserved remains of the ill-fated Pineda party found near Chila.

Unless early evidence is found elsewhere of the cult, and I am aware of none at this time, the origin of the Xipe ritual of sacrifice by flaying lies in the Gulf Coast. The ritual may have been passed to highland groups at the time of contact with the multi-ethnic Toltec empire in the Tulancingo and Mesquitlan areas. Another possibility for transfer might have come slightly later when Xolotl’s group of Chichimecs stayed among the Huastecs before migrating to the Valley of Mexico (Ixtlilxochitl 1965, 1: 81-83).

Other Aztec rituals involving flaying included a ceremony dedicated to the fire god, Huehueteotl. In this case, those sacrificed were first quite literally scorched before being flayed (Vaillant 1956: 196-197). Although the “old fire god” was extremely popular as a ceramic and sculptural motif from Formative times onward on the Gulf Coast, we have no evidence that flaying was associated with his worship.

ATTENDANTS FOR THE AFTERLIFE

There is a sixteenth century description of various death rituals in the Codex Magliabechiano, including the rites following the death of a noble (65 v):

They shrouded him squatting, as the Indians sit. ... In the time of their heathenism  they sacrificed one or two slaves before him so that they might be interred with  him ... to be buried with him after being cremated. And also in some parts . . . they  their women were buried with them, saying that beyond they would have to serve  them. And they buried also their treasure, if they had one.

The practice of sacrificing individuals to serve as attendants to a noble or ruler in the afterlife was general throughout Mesoamerica. It conformed to an almost universal concept in the prehistoric world that earthly status and wealth was transferable to the “beyond.” While verified archaeologically at several Mesoamerican sites, perhaps most notably at the entrance to the seventh-century tomb of Pacal at Palenque, there is little excavated evidence tor the practice in Veracruz.

One example from the extreme end of the Classic period, or beginning of the Epiclassic in the El Tajin region, comes from a temple at the site of Santa Luisa (Wilkerson 1971, n.d.b). Beneath a stucco floor, a bell-shaped chamber had been hollowed out of the earth fill and a flexed, seated body placed on a carved yoke. Offerings included metates, a ceramic vessel, jade beads, and red ochre. Directly in front of this interment another overlapping chamber with a separate entrance had been formed. In it was the

sprawled, face-down skeleton of an adult male. He apparently had been wearing a rare imported necklace of oliva shells, which either swung upward when the body was placed, or more likely dropped into the grave. His hands rested on two rattles and drums made of turtle carapace. Beneath him were fragments of a broken metate and above were the strewn and broken pieces of a composite earplug, a dog-tooth necklace, and a loom shuttle. In his mouth was a jade bead for use in the afterlife.

These findings come very close to duplicating those described in the Codex Magliabechiano. The principal figure is seated amidst symbols of wealth, particularly the carved yoke denoting the right to play the ball game, so important in the region of El Tajin. The attendant, however, is sprawled as if simply dropped. Except for the necklace he wears, all the offerings were intentionally crushed or broken, either to release their “spirits” or to conform to a ritual. The turtle shell instruments may be the musical accompaniment of death rituals, as among the Maya. Death of the attendant did not occur by decapitation or removal of the heart, but rather by some technique that left no evidence in the skeletal remains.

This example permits us to confirm the presence of attendant sacrifice but does not allow broad generalizations as to the nature of the practice.11 It does show a general adherence to a pattern known from elsewhere. In passing, it is pertinent to mention that throughout the latter portion of the Classic period infants were sometimes buried with canine attendants. Excavations, also at Santa Luisa, have exposed numerous burials of infants with ceramic offerings and dogs, usually in a curled posture.12 The primary significance of the pattern is that it shows that a belief in utilizing the aid of dogs in the trip to the afterlife (Sahagún 1956, 3: 295) was in existence by a.d. 600-700 on the Gulf Coast. This early date again suggests an early coastal origin for some widely practiced Postclassic ritual beliefs.

Another practice, verified for the pre-Aztec era and perhaps tame when compared to total human sacrifice, is the removal and burial of digits of a hand. An example at Santa Luisa was associated with a very young infant (Wilkerson n.d.b). The skeleton of the infant was found beneath an inverted bowl. Two adult phalanges were found directly adjacent and beneath another nearly identical ceramic offering. This certainly constituted a type of sacrifice in which the intent was to provide the infant with at least a symbolic attendant in the afterlife. The presence of the ceramic vessel

¹¹ I suspect that a review of other burials in Veracruz at Classic and Postclassic sites would demonstrate this not to be a unique case.

12 The infant burials were found concentrated outside the temple walls on the east side. The possibility that they were sacrificed could not be verified.

covering the remains of the finger, as if it were a complete individual, also emphasizes the human aspect. It may, in fact, be similar in intent to rituals of self-sacrifice where blood is drawn from the ears, tongue, or penis as an offering.¹³ The removal of a portion of a finger by the mother upon the death of a male child is known from several later ethnographic contexts, and also from the Maya region (Andrews 1959). Its presence here once again underscores the diversity of origins and interpretations for human sacrifice in eastern Mesoamerica.

SACRIFICE AS A PREROGATIVE AND REAFFIRMATION OF RULERSHIP

Rituals involving sacrifice, including human sacrifice, are not purely religious in nature. They also allow public reaffirmation of power and demonstrate the prerogatives of status. This is amply confirmed during the Postclassic period by the numerous descriptions of Mexica rulers beginning major sacrificial ceremonies, especially those which commemorate constructions and/or warfare carried out at their initiative.

These actions are not simply the result of the dual civic and religious duties of Precolumbian rulers; they also serve a decidedly secular purpose in making the ruler visible doing what only he (or only he and a few others) are permitted to do. In the Mexica capital, where human sacrifice was a constant occurrence, the ceremonies were spectacular, with long lines of individuals to be sacrificed.¹⁴ Duran (1971: 444) indicated that: 

mass sacrifice always indicated that a feast was of the highest rank. If there  were no (sacrifices), as in certain feasts which involved only offerings,  ceremonies, and merrymaking, the  festivals did not show the pomp, display,  or grandeur of those involving human sacrifice.

In early times, when sacrifice was to some extent still novel, such a ritual could be undertaken with far more modest circumstances and numbers. Late Classic El Tajin, the metropolitan center of a state,¹⁵ provides us with a very specific example on the Gulf Coast. The palace known as the Building of the Columns has a series of five carved columns which commemorate an important ruler named 13 Rabbit (Fig. 5). Dating is not precise, but on architectural and stylistic grounds they must be late in the

13 Two of the three forms can be confirmed for Veracruz. Blood sacrifice by drawing a stick through the tongue is depicted in an Early Postclassic stone tablet from near Tuxpan (Fewkes 1906). Perforation of the penis is depicted at El Tajin in the South Ball Court and is Epiclassic . Both individuals practicing the rite are gods—the wind god in the former case and the rain god in the latter.

¹⁴ The sacrifices at the dedication of the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan are an extreme example of this practice. The sacrifice of captured Huastecs by Moctezuma at the fixed feast of Tlacaxipehualiztli (Duran 1967, 1: 174 ff) is more typical.

15 The archaeological data for considering El Tajin to be the center, or capital, of a state is discussed in Wilkerson (n.d.c, J980a).

history of El Tajin, probably the tenth century. Each of the columns has a series of three registers depicting distinct rituals, most of which are shown as exterior scenes. Several show human sacrifice but only one of these highly fragmented registers can be adequately reconstructed (Fig. 6). &6

The ceremony shown is divided into three units: a central portion showing 13 Rabbit overseeing a sacrifice and two flanking processions leading to the central scene.¹⁶ The formal composition, with a bifurcated procession leading to the principal involved in ritual, may be a standard convention in the Classic period. Perhaps derived from mural painting, it also occurs in the mural of Room 1 at Bonampak.

There are sixteen participants in the ceremony, all with name glyphs above them (Fig. 7). In the center, prominently seated on a lashed-pole throne, his hands ritually crossed on his chest, is 13 Rabbit (11). He overlooks a recently completed sacrifice by decapitation and disembowelment (12). The headless torso lies supine on a low bench, its bowels spread upward over a wooden rack decorated with tassled maize plants. Two assistants flank the scene. One (13) steps on the lifeless body while the other (10), named 4 Axe, speaks and holds ritual accoutrements associated with the ball game. His depiction including a scepter, sash, and ball suggest a position as 13 Rabbit’s steward or noble attendant. Thirteen Rabbit’s (11) role as controller of the ritual is underscored further by having his feet placed directly on top of the victim’s severed head. The dominance of 13 Rabbit over the individual sacrificed and the ritual itself is thus explicitly presented and is the major theme of the register.

The bifurcated procession around the core scene of sacrifice is secondary and supportive. Prisoners (2, 5, 7, 9, 14, 16) and their captors (3, 6, 8, 15) are shown in the lines of participants. The prisoners are mostly nude, wearing little ornamentation. Their hands point upward to their own name glyphs and sometimes to those of their captors. Frequently, their hair is held by the captors in the traditional Mesoamerican symbol of conquest. The captors, clearly socially more important, are dressed in warrior attire and are usually shown in larger scale than the captives. Lest anyone overlook 13 Rabbit’s personal involvement in the conquests, he is shown once more (6), this time holding the hair of a submissive prisoner.  As the names of the captives (now largely eroded) are sufficiently significant to be shown along 

16 There is a fourth sub-unit which divides the two flanking processions on the opposite side of the column by having four personages face in opposite directions from the flow of their groups. This is more likely a device to separate the processions on the continuous face of the column, as the subject matter is identical. It also provides a scene centered 180 degrees from the primary focus and may have faced a secondary approach area to the columns.

Fig. 7 Roll-out rendering of the column at El Tajin. Drawing by Richard Schlecht, © National Geographic Society.

with those of 13 Rabbit and his major nobles it is reasonable to assume that they are rulers of subjugated towns or provinces.

While human sacrifice itself has a definite religious base, this scene at El Tajin functions to enhance the ruler 13 Rabbit. It commemorates secular conquest, hereditary prerogatives, and social position in a ritual context. The multiple sacrifice of captives symbolically reaffirms the two highly structured and essential institutions of rulership and religion. In format and purpose this ritual constitutes a harbinger of the more grandiose ceremonies reported for the fifteenth-century Aztecs. Its occurrence in so parallel a form at the end of the Classic period suggests greater time depth for many rituals described only for the last century of the Postclassic period. It also demonstrates the early participation of the cultures of the Veracruz coast in the broader institutionalization of multiple sacrifice.

DECAPITATION AND THE BALL COURT

Thirteen Rabbit’s ritual sacrifice shows death by decapitation and disembowelment. Based on all sculptural portrayals this was the standard method employed at El Tajin. Bowels were, at least in some rituals, spread on racks above the sacrifice. This was not a common procedure elsewhere in Mesoamerica at the time. Severed heads were not displayed in a tzompantli, but they were not necessarily discarded, either. Throughout north-central and south-central Veracruz, skulls are found as burial offerings or are occasionally buried singly during the Late Classic period.

The practice of obtaining trophy heads, especially in warfare, continued until European contact among the Huastecs.

Heads also came to figure prominently in the ball game. During the Late Classic period, heads came to be depicted on portable sculpture associated with the game, such as the ends of yokes, hachas, and some palmas in north-central Veracruz. Further south they were more common as motifs for small, tenoned, stone sculpture to be fastened to buildings, and for ceramic sculpture. There is tremendous variation in the ceramic figures, particularly among the Larios style of figurine which frequently show elaborately dressed warriors (i.e. in Weyerstall 1932).

The skull as a symbol of death is not a common theme on the Gulf Coast until this time period. Representations of the gods of death also become frequent. They occur in the same figurine styles as the death heads, on portable sculpture such as hachas, and on alters at El Tajin and Zapotal. The latter site has a U-shaped sanctuary with a large, unfired clay effigy of a death god, perhaps a form of Mictlantecutli.¹⁷

Female death figures also occur. A single case occurs as a deity at El Tajin on the southwest panel of the North Ball Court. Further south, in the Mixtequilla, women are frequently depicted nearly life size, with open mouths and closed eyes. The presence of a knotted belt, occasionally in the form of snakes, indicates death in childbirth. The commemoration through clay statuary of such events suggests a precursor of the Aztec

¹⁷This unfired clay effigy should be approximately contemporary in date to the Monte Alban IV masks and friezes at Lambitveco in Oaxaca.

association of death in childbirth and death in warfare (Caso 1954). The similar interpretation of both forms of death in solar ritual emphasizes their parallel meaning as two forms of self-sacrifice. Once more we may be encountering an early coastal belief system which later becomes generalized with the Aztec expansion.

In the ritual ball game and its paraphernalia we find a much older concept of sacrifice. Beginning perhaps, as early as Olmec times in the southern Gulf area, the game spread first along the Gulf Coast and then into the adjoining highlands and lowlands. It remained very strong throughout Veracruz in the Classic period and was certainly the central rite at El Tajin where at least ten courts were constructed. The significance of the game was such that the accoutrements of the ceremony were reproduced in stone and acquired ritual importance in their own right. As highly valued symbols of prerogative and authority, they were buried with their owners for use in the afterlife.¹⁸

Plain yokes, representing the waist protectors used on the court, were first fabricated in south-central Veracruz, possibly as early as the Middle Formative period. The first carved yokes, with a motif in a form of the earth monster, followed in the Late Formative and spread along the coast. This theme became increasingly elaborate with time and continued until the end of the yoke tradition at the beginning of the Postclassic. The significance of the earth monster here, I believe, is that it places the wearer symbolically in the Underworld or its entrance and, therefore, in a symbolic closeness to death.

The earth monster had a major role in the Mesoamerican world view. In Aztec times the monster Tlaltecuhtli, whose back was the earth, was thought to be female. Her head was in the east, and the entrance to the underworld lay through her jaws (Klein 1975: 70-71).¹⁹ In terms of such cosmology, wearing a yoke carved in the form of the monster located the person symbolically within a sacred and mythical framework.  Participating in the ball game meant not only a ritual awareness of death and the afterlife but the actual possibility of death through sacrifice.

As indicated earlier, sacrificial death in the ball game was accomplished by decapitation, at least at El Tajin. This pattern may have been widespread as suggested by other ball court sculptures at Aparicio in Veracruz,

18 Such was their value that even a fragment was considered an appropriate burial offering, particularly in cases where the deceased may not have been of sufficient status or wealth to have commissioned the original carving. Palma and yoke fragments are most frequently found in these contexts.

19 Klein (1975) distinguishes the male monster, Cipactli, by indicating that he is usually shown in profile while the female is shown in frontal or dorsal view. Yoke portrayals fall within the latter format.

and at Chichen Itza in Yucatan. Severing of the head is also recounted in the Popul Vuh where the Lords of Death address 1 Hunter and 7 Hunter, the first Maya (Edmonson 1971: 2156—2161):

You shall be sacrificed, 

said 1 Death 

and 7 Death

And then they were sacrificed 

and they were buried

At Dusty Court, as it is called,—

They were buried then.

1 Hunter’s head was cut off.

Only his body was buried with 

his younger brother’s.

The same lords later play ball with Hunter and Jaguar Deer, the descendants of the earlier sacrificed nobles, and use a skull as a ball (Edmonson 1971: 3693). It is thus not surprising to find death heads and skulls as a major theme of hachas, and even yokes.²⁰

Palmas, a similar variety of portable sculpture that evolved from hachas, vary from them in showing ritual scenes, some explictly of sacrifice, ritual accoutrements, or secondary deities. One, in the form of a zoomorphic deity, was excavated at Santa Luisa (Fig. 8). It is from a large group of

²⁰ Chacteristic of many Late Classic yokes from the north-central Veracruz area are heads carved on the ends. Many, if not all, are death heads or renderings of decapitated participants in the ball game. Some earlier yokes also appear to be recarved with this motif at about this time.

“bird” motif palmas which date to the end of the Classic and have attributes similar to Harpy eagles²¹ and vultures (Fig. 9). Not precisely the coxcualcuahtli of later times, this mythical bird is shown at El Tajin devouring the bowels of the sacrificed (Fig. 10), and dancing in the panels of both sculptured ball courts. Sometimes it wears the mirror and chest band associated with the rain god at El Tajin.

The position of this carrion bird, with its implications of death and sacrifice, is sufficiently important to be a major theme of ball game sculpture. It parallels the death motifs of the hachas and suggests an increased focus on sacrifice in the ball-court ritual during the Late Classic period. The extension of yokes, hachas, and palmas southward through the Isthmus to Guatemala and El Salvador almost certainly corresponds not only to migration, but also to the diffusion of an intensified sacrificial version of the ball game.²²

²¹The raised crest feathers of the Harpy eagle (Harpia harpyja), common until the twentieth century in Veracruz, are a distinctive dement which appears on a number of sculptural depictions.

²²The southward migration of Late Classic peoples, such as the Cotoque or Chicomuceltec speakers (a branch of the Huastecs), also may be involved in the spread of these sculptures. Present dating, however, suggests that the spread had begun before the massive migrations toward the end of El Tajin’s Epiclassic occupation.

Fig. 10 An anthropomorphized bird pulls on the entrails of a sacrificial victim during decapitation. The scene is from a ritual depicted on 13 Rabbit’s columns at El Tajin. Photograph by David Hiser.

THE CONVERGENCE OF SACRIFICIAL RITUALS

The sculptures of the South Ball Court at El Tajin are a succinct example of the syncretic evolution of Mesoamerican religion and the convergence of sacrificial rituals. This court has an east-west axis and is located between Temple 5 (to the north) and Temple 34 (to the south); it is just to the south of the Temple of the Niches in the ceremonial focus of the city. It is half of a “double ball court,” the other half of which has the same “end zone” but extends north-south between two low platforms (Buildings 13 and 14) to the east. Contrasting with its companion court with sloping walls, the South Ball Court has vertical sides. These walls of immense sandstone flags were carved in situ to form six panels which have survived mostly intact. Located at the ends and center of each parallel wall, the panels provide a graphic portrayal of the ball game ritual and its cosmology. Given the explicitness of the scenes, and their value for reconstructing a sacrificial rite of central importance to eastern Mesoamerica, they warrant abbreviated consideration.

Fig. 11 The southeast panel of the South Ball Court at El Tajin (after Kampen 1972: fig. 20; with new labels added).

These sculptures essentially depict the ritual in a “stop-frame” manner, from initiation to completion. They begin with the ceremonies of mortals and end with the successful intervention of the appropriate gods. The sequence starts in the southeast panel with the ritual dressing of the protagonist as a warrior (Fig. 11). He stands in the center (1) and is handed a bundle of spears by an attendant (2) seated at the base of a plant (3), perhaps maize.²³ The central figure holds an incense bag and stands in front of an individual (4) seated on a throne, who wears his hair in the style of the “old hunchback” or rain god at El Tajin. The scene is of ritual

23 Another possibility is a quauchcapatlachtli, a small tree which bears fruit similar to cacao and which was planted in cacao plantations. The fruit has a diagnostic ring at the stern which attaches to the end of the branches as shown here. Probably Enallagma latifolio, this tree is still found on portions of the Late Classic irrigation system of Santa Luisa.

Fig. 12 The southwest panel of the South Ball Court at El Tajin (after Kampen 1972: fig. 21; with new labels added).

preparation and is conceptually parallel to the upper east register of Room 1 at Bonampak. The entire scenario is viewed by a death deity (5) who arises from a pot or olla that floats in a vat of liquid. Over the panel are a series of interlocked glyphs including a Venus form at the far right (6) and an ollin sign (7) within a cartouche in the form of a stylized incense bag; if El Tajin has an emblem glyph, it is likely to be this.

The second panel in the sequence is in the southwest corner of the ball court (Fig. 12). At this point the ritual has progressed to another preparatory phase which involves music and perhaps contemplation. The protagonist (1) reclines in the center of the composition on a sofalike item of furniture. His arms and legs are in ritual positions which imitate one of the pulque gods. He is flanked by two musicians, one playing a turtle carapace drum or a teponaztli (2), and the other using two clay rattles, or sonajas (3).

Fig, 13 The northwest panel of the South Ball Court at El Tajin (after Kampen 1972: fig. 22; with new labels added).

The gods themselves are also present. In front dances the eagle, shown frequently on palmas and associated with sacrifice (4). The defleshed figure of Venus (5) floats above. The death god (6), arising from an olla placed in a vat of ritual drink, again looks on; variations (7) of the same earlier glyphs are aligned across the top of the entire panel.

The next sculpture is in the northwest corner of the ball court (Fig. 13). Events have now moved into the ball court itself. The scene is just prior to the ball game. Two players, identified by their waist protectors, speak and confront each other with a ball and intertwined sashes between them. The protagonist, presumably on the left (i), looks across at a priest-player holding a flint knife (2). These central characters are flanked by two figures who may be impersonating gods. The left-hand figure (3) uses the cap and baton of the Tajin rain god; the right-hand figure may be dressed as a dog or jaguar (4), one of the representations of Venus (Thompson 1966: 22, 218). Both figures are atop buildings (5, 6) that represent the

Fig. 14 The northeast panel of the South Ball Court at El Tajin (after Kampen 1972: fig. 23; with new labels added).

actual ones that flank the ball court today. The death god continues to view the ritual from the side (7).

The fourth sculpture in the series is in the northeast corner of the ball court and depicts the termination of the game (Fig. 14). The protagonist is center front, seated on a rounded object with his arms held back (1). The priest-player of the previous panel wields a knife in the act of decapitation (2). His helper (3), also dressed as a player with knee protectors, wears a peculiar form of cap. This headgear, similar to a “Huastec hat,” is associated with the wind god at El Tajin and may indicate another impersonation in the ceremony. Directly above the sacrificial figure descends the Venus figure with a speech scroll coming from his mouth (4). Behind the sacrificer sits the impersonator of the ram god (5). It seems quite probable that all of the players in this particular game are impersonating diverse deities.

There is a fifth scene which takes the end of the game somewhat further in the direction of the Underworld. Interestingly enough, this relief is not a part of the ball court but rather a trapezoidal tablet (Fig. 15) once placed

Fig. 15 Sculpture from the Temple of the Niches at El Tajin (after Kampen 1972: fig. 19a; with new labels added).

in the corbeled arch at the entranceway of the sanctuary of the Temple of the Niches.²⁴ Carved in a stiffer, somewhat later style, the partially recovered sculpture shows the same figures as those in the northeast panel and again we have the zoomorphic impersonator (1) shown at the beginning of the game. The entire scene is surrounded by a design (2) used to represent the vertebrae of a skeleton and death. Significantly, the ball is now shown as a skull (3) and the blood issuing from the body appears as snakes (4). Although this particular sculpture is fragmentary, another ball court in the El Tajin region at Aparicio also shows a decapitated player with seven snakes surging from the torso.²⁵

²⁴The Temple of the Niches apparently became a type of summary shrine during the end of the Classic period. Its sculptures focus primarily on the cult of the rain god, but some also relate to distinct cults associated with other buildings around it.

²⁵ A similar image appears at the Great Ball Court of Chichen Itza.

Fig. 16 The north-central panel of the South Ball Court at El Tajin (after Kampen 1972: fig. 25; with new labels added).

The following scene is located in the center of the north wall of the court (Fig. 16). It takes place in the Underworld, and in ritual terms is the climax of the entire ceremony. The protagonist (1), now with his head back on his body, literally stands before the gods. He holds an olla under his right arm and looks up at the rain god (2) who presides over the event. His left hand points at the ometecomatl or pulque vat (3), with its chacmool-positioned deity (4).²⁶ The location is a temple with merlons (5) situated against a large place glyph showing maguey plants in flower (6).²⁷ Above the temple are seated the wind god (7) wearing the ehecatlocoxcatl or wind jewel, and the rain god (2) with his sash, baton, and snakelike scepter. To emphasize further that the ritual is in the Underworld, the panel is flanked by vertical rows of lunar glyphs (8, 9), femurs (10, r 1), and Venus glyphs (12, 13). A bifurcated version of the pulque god (14) is above all, in a compositional format similar to the earth-monster motifs on yokes.

26 In the recent excavation of the innermost and earliest temple in the Aztec Templo Mayor, a chacmool sculpture was found in the temple of the rain god. The similar association, centuries earlier at El Tajin, again suggests considerable time depth for another important Postclassic cult in the Gulf Coast region. In the nineteenth century, a chacmool was also found at Zempoala (Galindo y Villa 1912: lams. 28, 29).

²⁷The region of El Tajin is too low in elevation and too humid for maguey to flower.

The scene illustrates the reason for the entire ritual and sacrifice. The supplicant is requesting the ritual drink, pulque, from the gods, and the rain god in particular. The pulque gods at El Tajin appear to be alternative forms of the rain god and/or are controlled by him. The rain god, thought to reside in Tlalocan, his realm in the Underworld, can only be approached there through death. The ball game is the vehicle for this necessary step in the ceremony.

The location of the temple within the rain god’s domain is extremely important, as nearly one-third of the depiction is devoted to the place sign (6). The elements of the glyph are a mountain and flowering maguey. This should be the Tajin version of Popzonaltepetl, or the “Mountain of Foam,” the mythical place recorded by Sahagún (1956, 3: 211) as the origin of pulque.²⁸ The ritual in the South Ball Court at El Tajin would thus be directed toward ensuring the continued propagation of maguey and pulque by the gods and access to it by mortals through the proper use of ceremony.

That the ceremony and request in the Underworld was successful is shown by the last panel, in the center of the south wall (Fig. 17). There, the same temple (1) is illustrated next to the Mountain of Foam (2). The god of wind (3) remains above the temple, and the moon (4), in the form of a rabbit, floats above. The rain god (5), squatting to the right of the vat now lowered in level, fills it by running a perforator through his penis. The act of self-sacrifice by the god provides pulque for the reverent people of El Tajin. Blood becomes pulque and the stage is set for the cycle to begin again.

Various rituals embodying concepts of sacrifice con verge in this Late Classic ceremony. The core is the old ball game with its critical relationship to the Underworld. Grafted to it are cult aspects of Venus, perhaps equally old, and the newer rites of the pulque gods. The presence throughout of Venus figures and glyphs suggest that the ritual is associated with the 584-day Venus cycle.

The nine-day period in which Venus disappears as ;in evening star and is thought to remain in the Underworld until it rises as a morning star is especially appropriate. This period of disappearance and the subsequent rising was considered particularly dangerous and was a major focus of Venus ritual (Coe 1973: 120). In the context of the Tajin ritual, the descent into the Underworld by the sacrificed participant may have been enhanced by his association with the deity. The game itself may have been in the context of a game between the gods, impersonated by the players. Venus inevi-

²⁸Garcia Payón (1973) also considers the South Ball Court and its relationship to pulque. Abbreviated diagrams are shown in Wilkerson (1980a).

Fig. 17 The south-central panel of the South Ball Court at El Tajin (after Kampen 1972: fig. 24; with new labels added).

-tably loses and goes to the Underworld. There, during the nine-day stay, proper entreaties are made to the deities who control and make pulque.

Pulque, which can only be produced in the highlands, became a major ritual drink among the cultures of the Veracruz coast. While primarily associated in the early literature with the Huastecs of the north Gulf area in Postclassic times (Sahagún 1956, 3: 211-212; Díaz del Castillo 1964), its origins are earlier. In Late Classic El Tajin it is extremely important. There is, in fact, a collapsed temple structure (in front of Building 10) at the west end of the South Ball Court, which may have been an ometecomatl, or pulque vat. The remains show both merlons and stone courses similar to the pulque temple depicted in the central panels.

The cult may even have been earlier in south-central Veracruz. There the “smiling-face” figurines assume ritual postures and exhibit the swollen, protruding tongues that are attributes of the pulque gods at El Tajin. Their facial contortions are really more consistent with ritual drunkenness than the benign romanticism of a cult of laughter.²⁹

²⁹A preliminary analysis of figurine cults in south-central Veracruz (Wilkerson n.d.a) suggests the possibility that the Sonriente cult was the focus of a nativistic movement at the end of the Classic period.

Regardless of the absolute time depth of pulque rituals, it is important that by the end of the Classic period such ceremonies involved human sacrifice. It is also significant that the practice of merging sacrificial rituals and having long cyclic impersonations of the gods existed at least six hundred years before the well-described Aztec rites.

There are additional archaeological and sculptural indications of human sacrifice in the eastern lowlands of Mesoamerica. Infant sacrifice may date back to Olmec times, and there are numerous Formative period figurines which suggest rituals of individual sacrifice. We cannot consider these data here, but we can draw some specific and general conclusions about human sacrifice in eastern Mesoamerica from the rituals we have examined.

CONCLUSIONS

1)    During the Late Postclassic period the eastern lowlands of Mesoamerica shared with Central highland Mexico the practice of frequent single and multiple human sacrifice. This practice was integrated into essentially the same calendar, with the same feasts and deities. The ceremonies appear to have been similar to those reported for Nahuatl speakers, especially in provinces dominated by the Aztec tribute state. Feasts such as Panquetzaliztli and Tlacaxipehualiztli are reported. The method of sacrifice in the Aztec-dominated region was heart removal, while in the Huastec region to the north, decapitation may have predominated. Flaying, either before or after death, occurred in certain rituals, perhaps in both regions, but certainly in the north. Mass sacrifice, except possibly in warfare and particularly among the Huastecs, does not appear to have been practiced. Although there was an intensification of human sacrifice in the Postclassic period, it was never on the grand scale of the Aztec practice.

2)    Although there was a strong Mexican model for human sacrifice in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the practice along the Veracruz coast greatly exceeds this time period. Sacrifice through ritual flaying dates at least to the Late Formative period in south-central Veracruz and suggests that the god Xipe originated in the region.

3)    Sacrifices of attendants to aid the elite in the afterlife occurred by at least the Late Classic in Veracruz, but their frequency is unknown. The practice appears to be essentially similar to that described in other regions. A variation was to bury a portion of a hand, symbolically a human attendant, with an infant.

4)    At least by the end of the Classic period at El Tajin elaborated rituals of multiple sacrifice existed to enhance and affirm rulership and its prerogatives. These ceremonies, in structure and intent, are direct forerunners of the massive rituals seen by the Spaniards in 1520.

5)    Decapitation was the common form of sacrifice in the Late Classic period ball game. The ball game itself had an emphasis on death from at least the Late Formative period. The intensification of the sacrificial emphasis is reflected in the death motifs of yokes, hachas, and palmas.

6)    As a general pattern on the Gulf Coast, the evidence prior to the Late Classic suggests individual sacrifice, while the later Classic and Postclassic data indicate rituals of multiple sacrifice.

7)    The convergence of rituals involving human sacrifice begins by the Late Classic period in El Tajin. The old ball game ritual became a vehicle for facilitating other previously separate cults such as those associated with Venus and pulque. This is probably a result of the conceptual relationship between the ball game and the Underworld. Such syncretic ceremonialism involved impersonations and ritual interaction of the deities being worshipped.

8)    The ritual drinking of pulque, so prominent in the lowlands at the time of the Conquest, required elaborate procedures to assure its abundance at Classic El Tajin. Thought to derive from the self-sacrifice of the rain god, the proper solicitation of pulque required sacrificial death in order to search for the drink in the Underworld at the Mountain of Foam.

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The Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan: Economics and Ideology 

EDUARDO MATOS MOCTEZUMA

INSTITUTO NACIONAL DE ANTROPOLOGIA E HISTORIA, MEXICO

The excavations of the proyecto Templo mayor have given us much important archaeological data, which, together with the ethnohistorical data, greatly broaden our knowledge of the Templo Mayor of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the sacred place that controlled the destiny of the Mexica and their subjects.¹ Beginning in March 1978, the project was based on specific questions which were to be answered through the archeological and historical data, with the understanding that both kinds of evidence are complementary and necessary to explain the Templo Mayor.

I must point out, however, that this investigation is still being carried out and that there is much to be done before verifying what is presented here.

This essay focuses on a group of phenomena related to the Templo Mayor that are analyzed under two general categories: “phenomenon” and “essence.” By “phenomenon” is meant the outward appearance of an object and the processes of its objective reality, which moves and changes. “Essence,” the more stable of the two categories, is the internal aspect or process that is contained within and manifested through a phenomeon. Scientific knowledge should be directed not only to the study of phenomena, but to the study of the internal processes, of the essence that produces these phenomena. The four phenomena analyzed here are:

1) The myth of the birth of Huitzilopochtli and his battle against Coyolxauhqui; this myth plays an important role in relation to the temple itself and the god.

2) The fact that both Tlaloc and Huitzilopochtli preside over the Templo Mayor; the duality they represent, aside from the architectural features of the temple.

¹The original Spanish text of this article appeared without illustrations in the site report for the Proyecto Templo Mayor (Matos Moctezuma 1982). Kay Brazo translated the text, and this illustrated version was prepared by Elizabeth Boone.

The Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan

3)    The monthly feasts and rituals that took place in the temple.

4)    The offerings related to the temple.

An analysis of these phenomena allows us to make the following statements: The Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan was the place where the whole of the Mexica power was actually or symbolically established. The presence of Tlaloc and Huitzilopochtli in the twin sanctuaries is but a reflection of the economic basis—agriculture and war—within the ideological context (religion). As a result, the whole archaeological context associated with the Templo Mayor (offerings, sculptures, rituals, etc.) in some way indicates the economic-religious-political control Tenochtitlan had over its own people and other groups.

Figure 1 illustrates this relationship. The aspect of phenomenon (A) is what we generally know as the physical presence of Tlaloc and Huitzilopochtli in the Templo Mayor, the symbols and elements proper to each deity, the rituals of the various festivals and their characteristics, etc.; this includes everything manifested and present before the priest and the participants with all of its religious complexity. The essence (B) is what is not directly present, but which nevertheless acts as the basis of the entire process. For us this is the ideological presence of these two deities in the Templo Mayor. First, there is Tlaloc, god of water and rain, a basic god for agricultural peoples like the Mexica; and we know that much of the economic foundation of Tenochtitlan was in agricultural production. Second, there is Huitzilopochtli, the tribal god, solar god, god of war, and god of imposition upon other groups —an imposition that required tribute from the various subject areas in the form of basic products such as maize, beans, cocoa, blankets, feathers, and art objects, and raw materials such as furs, stone, lime, etc. In other words, the presence of these two gods, and not others, is a reflection of the economic basis of Tenochtitlan.

BIRTH OF HUITZILOPOCHTLI

We know from several ethnohistorical sources that mention the Mexica pilgrimage, of how, when the Mexica approached Coatepec near Tula, the god Huitzilopochtli was born fully armed from the womb of Coatlicue and did battle with his sister Coyolxauhqui and his brothers. Generally this myth is believed to stem from an actual historical fact (Lesur 1967: 181-189), which is not surprising if one remembers that the historical figure Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, like the Egyptian Osiris, became a god. The same transference occurs with the Huitzilopochtli myth; that is, history gives way to myth and is incorporated in the sacred area, so that ritual will constantly remanifest what happened during mythical times.

The myth is inseparably integrated into the Templo Mayor, for the Templo Mayor is essentially a tangible representation of the myth itself (León-Portilla 1978). Elements of the myth are clearly present in the south side of the Templo Mayor, the side dedicated to Huitzilopochtli. A beheaded and dismembered Coyolxauhqui (Fig. 2) lies at the foot of the stairway that leads to the temple where Huitzilopochtli resides, triumphant in his sanctuary. Other important features potentially related to the myth are: the serpent heads at the end of the balustrades of the stairway (Fig. 3) and that decorate the southern and back (eastern) facades of the pyramid, the series of projecting stones that do not represent anything in particular but are found in different sections of the pyramidal base, and the eight male statues found reclining on the stairway of one of the building

phases (Fig. 4); these eight statues had probably been originally located in the different areas of the temple and were gathered together and buried when that building phase was covered.

If we consider these sculptures carefully, we see that there is a close correspondence between the elements of the myth and the features of the temple-pyramid. The location of the two deities (the participants in the battle) is perfectly logical, for they ate placed in accordance with the myth: Coyolxauhqui lies defeated at the foot of the temple/hill, and Huitzilopochtli resides triumphant at the summit. The serpent heads, on the other hand, speak of the place-name where the birth and battle occurred: Coatepec, or Serpent Hill. The other projecting stones that are without decoration could have functioned to reinforce the concept of a hill.

Of the eight male statues (Fig. 4), some of which are about two meters high, at least six are so-called standard bearers. But all eight could also be representations of the Centzonhuiznahua, the enemies of Huitzilopochtli referred to by Alvarado Tezozomoc (1944: 300) in his Crónica Mexicana when he says “. . . and of the others called Tzohuitznahua, . . . which were made of stone, portrayed with shields, around the hill of the temple.” These statues wear the maxtlatl and have a type of diadem on their heads. The chests of some have a hole covered with stucco or stone. One figure had green stones inside the chest hole, and another had green stones and a small green head of the same material, both of which recall Bartolomé de Las Casas’s (1965 ) statement that “They used to put a fine precious stone in the chest of their idols, saying that these were their hearts, in memory of which they should also place one with their dead.”

Through the myth an internal, political battle among the Mexica tribe became, with time, a cosmic battle between two deities. Coyolxauhqui not only is the defeated god, but represents the defeated faction in the tribal split. Prisoners destined for sacrifice at the Templo Mayor passed next to her, reinforcing the fact that these defeated persons had also to be offered to the triumphant Huitzilopochtli.

In this way, the Mexica achieved two goals. On the one hand, the birth and victory of Huitzilopochtli at Coatepec was re-enacted through each human sacrifice at the Templo Mayor, and the blood (the precious liquid) guaranteed the march of the sun, and the continuance of the universe. On the other hand, an economic-political statement was made, for Coyolxauhqui represented the victim who came from a defeated enemy group that was required to pay tribute (symbolized here by the victim’s sacrifice).

Through ritual the offering was made not only to an important tribal deity, but also to a sun-warrior who ensured economically and religiously, the survival of the Mexica. The entire ideological apparatus was aimed

toward survival, and it merged economic and mythical concerns to give added validity to the ritual. This phenomenon—the ritual—contains in itself an essence of the Templo Mayor.

TLALOC AND HUITZILOPOCHTLI

The second group of phenomena—the presence of the two deities in the upper part of the Templo Mayor and some of the features of the temple itself—also expresses a duality. A number of sixteenth-century sources describe the temple as well as the two deities. Sahagún (1956, 1: 45) tells us about Tlaloc:

1.    This god called Tlaloc Tlamacazqui was the god of rain.

2.    They said he gave them rain to water the earth, to grow herbs, trees and fruits and sustenance; they also said he sent hail, thunder and lightning, storms, and perils on the rivers and sea.

3.    To be called Tlaloc Tlamacazqui meant that he was a god who lived in the earthly paradise and who gave man the necessary sustenance for physical life.

When describing Huitzilopochtli, the same chronicler (Sahagún 1956, I. 43) says:

1.    This god called Huitzilopochtli was another Hercules, who was very robust, very strong and bellicose, a destroyer of towns and killer of persons.

2.    In war he was like live fire, feared by his enemies. . . .

3.    Because of his strength and dexterity in war he was held in awe by  the Mexica during his life.

When Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1943: 286—287) records his visit to the city of Tenochtitlan, he describes the Templo Mayor as follows:¹

On each altar were two figures, like giants with very tall bodies  and very fat, and the first one, which was on the right side, they  said he was Huichilobos, their god of war.

He later adds:

In the highest part there was another recess very richly carved in  wood and another figure, half man and half alligator. . . . The body  was full of all the seeds that there are in the world, and they said  he was the god of all of the fields and fruits.

In appendix 2 of his second book, Sahagún (1956, I: 232) also describes the temple:

The principal tower was in the middle and was the tallest; it was  dedicated to Huitzilopochtli or Tlacauepan Cuexctozin. This tower  was di-

Fig. 5 View of the Huitzilopochtli temple, Phase 2. Note the sacrificial stone and the sculpted human head located on the top step in line with the stone.

Fig. 6 An enlargement of the head in Fig. 5 (left), and the sacrificial stone in front of the Huitzilopochtli temple, Phase 2 (right).

vided at the top so that it would appear as two, and there were two chapels or altars at the summit, each covered by a tall roof, on top of which were distinct insignias or emblems. In the first and greatest [temple] was the statue of Huitzilopochtli, who was also called llhuicatl xoxouhqui; in the other was the image of the god Tlaloc. In front of each one was a round stone like a chopping block that they called techactl, where they killed those who were sacrificed in honor of that deity. And extending from the stone to the bottom [of the pyramid] was a pool of blood from those killed on it, and thus it was on all the other towers. These towers faced to the west, and [the Indians] climbed up them by means of narrow, straight steps going from the bottom to the top of all these towers.

On the Huitzilopochtli side of the Templo Mayor on the upper part and in the front of the sanctuary entrance, we excavated the actual sacrificial stone (Figs. 5, 6), evident symbol of Mexica power and the sacrifice of prisoners of war. It is a very simple black tezontle stone, the dimensions of which coincide with those of Sahagún’s description. Later, Sahagún (1956, I: 111) also mentions a sacrificial stone in the context of the feast of Tlacaxipehualxtli:

Once [the victims] reached the block, which was a stone of three palms high or more, and about two wide, they were placed on their backs...  Actually, the stone found in situ, perfectly embedded in the upper platform two meters from the stairway, was 50 X 45 centimeters. Duran (1951, 2: 82) clearly identifies the position of the sacrificial stone when he says:

In front of the rooms where the gods were, there was a forty-foot  patio, very smooth and whitewashed, in the middle of which and  in front of the two rooms there was a pointed green stone, waist  high, so that a man lying on it had to bend his body on this stone,  where they sacrificed men.

In front of the sanctuary entrance on the Tlaloc side of the Templo Mayor, in nearly the same position as the sacrificial stone in front of Huitzilopochtli’s sanctuary, we excavated a polychrome chacmool (Fig. 7), which fully confirms the generally accepted role of the chacmool figures as the divine messenger, the intermediary between the priest and the god. Both elements—the sacrificial stone and the chacmool—illustrate the nature of the temple’s duality, the first relating to war and the other being the divine messenger.

Regarding the sanctuaries themselves, our excavations revealed that the

Fig. 8 View of the oldest complete twin temples found, Phase 2, showing, on the upper left, one of the polychrome pilasters flanking the entrance to the Tlaloc sanctuary.

entrance to the Tlaloc sanctuary is guarded by two wide stone pilasters (Fig. 8). The outside faces of these pilasters are painted with white Tlaloc eyes on a black band, below which are three horizontal bands (painted red, blue, and red, respectively) and rows of black and white vertical bands. The inside faces of the pilasters each have a standing figure with yellow body paint who wears blue and red bracelets and anklets and a blue and black necklace or breastplate; his left arm is extended forward, and he holds a staff or lance in this hand.

Along the inside back wall of both sanctuaries we excavated a bench on which the god sat, flanked by two walls. In the Huitzilopochtli temple, we found, in the middle of the bench and on line with the sacrificial stone, the remains of a small altar on which the deity was placed. Duran (1951, 2: 81) referring to the idol in the temple of Huitzilopochtli says that, “This idol dressed and adorned like this was always placed on a high altar within a small chamber.” Our excavations also revealed pieces of wood, which were probably decorated and formed part of the pilasters of both sanctuaries. Many chroniclers, such as Díaz del Castillo (1943: 287) and Cortés (1977: 260), saw these richly decorated pieces of wood in the interior of the sanctuaries.

I should point out here that the temples revealed in the Proyecto Templo Mayor correspond to one of the first construction phases, perhaps corresponding to the reign of Huitzilopochtli, Chimalpopoca, or Itzcoatl, that is, before 1428 and the liberation of the Mexica from Azcapotzalco. Several facts that have led us to this conclusion are the size of the building in comparison to the later constructions, and the fact that is the oldest phase found. On top of this building there were as many as ten later phases of expansion that covered all four sides, and there were five other-construction phases that were only additions to the main facade. The temple we excavated is the oldest construction yet found that has all of its four sides. The paintings on most of the sanctuary walls were executed on flattened mud or, less often, on stucco, which suggests that the technique of mural painting was poorly developed. The sacrificial stone of tezontle could indicate that the Mexica were still under Tepanec rule, because this stone is easily obtained in the Valley of Mexico; chroniclers such as Duran (1951, 2: 82) said that the sacrificial stone (of the last construction period) was a green stone, which I feel must have been imported from the state of Guerrero, where this type of material originates. The fill covering this early temple was much more extensive than the fill covering later construction phases. This gives the impression that the Mexica decided to build a great temple over their smaller one once they had been liberated from Azcapotzalco, and it suggests that the Mexica then had the means of accomplishing this: that they had subjects to bring tezontle stone and mud for the fill, and had access to other basic materials for the construction.

I have already mentioned the economic duality reflected by the juxtaposition of Tlaloc and Huitzilopochtli in the Templo Mayor, but this juxtaposition is also linked to Mexica political power. The Templo Mayor is architecturally organized, with two entrance stairways to the upper part where the sanctuaries for both deities are found. This architectural feature is present in Central Mexico as early as the thirteenth century (at Tenayuca) and is seen later in several Mexica temples (at Teopanzolco, Sta. Cecilia, Tlatelolco, and Tenochtitlan). I believe this concept of twin stairways and temples springs from the power struggle that develops in classconscious societies. At Teotihuacan, which is considered a theocratic society by some scholars, control was in the hands of the priests under whom the military operated. Among the Mexica, however, the battle between the priestly and military groups for complete control ended with the union of both entities, and the Mexica tlatoani was both the principal priest and the captain of the armies. The political alliance of priests and warriors is expressed by the juxtaposition of Tlaloc and Huitzilopochtli in the Templo Mayor and is united in the single figure of the tlatoani. ³

RITUALS OF THE TEMPLO MAYOR

In analyzing the rituals that took place in the Templo Mayor, it is necessary first to look at the importance of ritual in relation to myth and then to see how the reenactment of myths were important in the sacred context of Tenochtitlan. As I have previously pointed out (Matos Moctezuma 1978: 50), there are three important aspects in the formation of myths:

1.    Myths are part of the magic-religious phenomenon, and they also reflect part of the socioeconomic structure and such other phenomena as art and law.

2.    Myths attempt to answer questions man has always had. Myths are based on magical mechanisms that allow explanations to be developed, and they create supernatural beings that aid man in his search. Thus myths arise as answers.

3.    Once myths are created by man, they have to be continually manifested, so that social behavior and ritual become repetitive acts of what occurred in mythical times.

Thus ritual is a means of repeating the original myth, which, according to Eliade, is held in two forms of time: the sacred and the profane. He says (Eliade 1959: 70):

. . . the religious man lives in two kinds of time, of which the more important, sacred  time, appears under the paradoxical aspect of a circular time, reversible and  recoverable, a sort of eternal mythical present that is periodically reintegrated by  means of rites.

In the context of the Templo Mayor we have both the rites and the myth that originated them. I have already discussed the characteristics of the Templo Mayor as a recreation of the sacred hill of Coatepec and the “living” presence of the birth and battle of Huitzilopochtli. Now we can look at the various ceremonies (rituals) that took place there to see how sacrifice became important within the rites.

Of the eighteen monthly feasts, at least seven feasts are related to gods of rain and water (or the deities of maize, etc.), and at least six are related to Huitzilopochtli or war. The feasts pertaining to water or agricultural fertility, and their patron deities, are:

1.    Atlcahualo - Tlaloques or Chalchiuhtlicue

2.    Tozoztontli - Tlaloc

3.    Uey Tozoztli - Centeotl

3 I recommend Johanna Broda’s (1978: esp. 221—225) study of the importance and characteristics of the Mexica

4.    Etzalcualiztli - gods of rain

 5.    Tecuilhuitontli - Uixtocihuatl (sister of the Tlaloques)

 6.    Uey Tecuilhuitl - Xilonen

 7.    Atemoztli - gods of rain

The feasts related to Huitzilopochtli are:

 1.    Tlacaxipehualiztli - Xipe (sacrifices in the temple of   Huitzilopochtli)

 2.    Tlaxochimaco

 3.    Ochpaniztli - Toci (sacrifices for Huitzilopochtli)

 4.    Panquetzaliztli - Huitzilopochtli

 5.    Quecholli - Mixcoatl

 6.    Toxcatl - Tezcatlipoca and Huitzilopochtli

The interpretation of the Templo Mayor pyramid as a hill is consistent with the presence of Tlaloc’s shrine at the summit, because some of the sacrifices in honor of the god of rain (i.e. during the months of Atlacahualo and Tozoztontli) took place on a hill. It is also interesting to note that a woman representing Uixtocihuatl, the older sister of the Tlaloque, was regularly sacrificed at the Tlaloc temple. In other feasts the victim, who was usually female, was painted and then beheaded in the sacrificial rite; such was the case with the impersonator of Xilonen (Sahagún 1956, 2: 119).

I mention this decapitation particularly because we found in our excavations a large relief sculpture decorated with elements of the rain gods (snails, water currents, etc.) and with a representation of a woman with exposed breasts who is represented on top of another figure, both of whom have the facial features of Tlaloc (Fig. 9). The female also has small skulls tied as ornaments to her legs and has skulls and crossbones on her skirt. This relief could be a representation of such a decapitation sacrifice.

With respect to the Huitzilopochtli temple, the most meaningful ceremony is perhaps Panquetzaliztli. The descriptions of the feast by Tezozomoc (1975: 32—36) and Sahagún (1956, 1: 127-128) indicate that Panquetzaliztli is the reenactment of the myth of the battle of Huitzilopochtli, as several authors have noted (i.e., Lesur 1967; León-Portilla 1978: 58—65). The most significant features of the ceremony are:

1)    The slaves who will be sacrificed carry blankets and huipiles to deposit in the calpulco which is reminiscent of the Mexica pilgrimage before reaching Coatepec.

2)    Four prisoners are sacrificed in the ball court (according to Tezozomoc) and in other places.

3)    A skirmish between two groups of slaves is organized; one group represents the Huitznahua, who are aided by the people of the neighborhood.

4)    The victims go around the temple once, just as the Huitznahua were chased by Huitzilopochtli around the hill of Coatepec.

5)    The descent of the Xiuhcoatl (fire serpent) is imitated with torches and with the head and tail of a serpent made of paper; red feathers stick out of the serpent’s gullet to resemble fire.

6)    After the prisoners and slaves are killed, their bodies are thrown down the steps of the temple, just as the god threw Coyolxauhqui from the top of the hill, dismembering her.

I believe this practice of throwing the already-sacrificed bodies down the stairs corresponds to the mythical action of Huitzilopochtli against Coyolxauhqui, and it is possible that the dismembering of the body upon falling is also a reenactment of this part of the myth.

In yet another ritual that took place at the Templo Mayor, reference is made to the myth of Huitzilopochtli. During the feast of Toxcatl, which is dedicated to Tezcatlipoca, dough was made into the image of Huitzilopochtli, and it was placed in the temple of Huitznahuac according to Sahagún (1956, 1: 156):

In the temple called Huitznahuac they put it on a platform, and the wood [of the  platform] was carved like serpents that had their heads on the four sides of the  platform, opposite one another, so that there were tails and heads on the four sides.

They covered the core of the image with sticks of mesquite, and then they filled this  with that dough until it formed the body of man. They did this in the house where  they always kept the image of Huitzilopochtli.

After making [the dough image], they covered it with all the clothing of  Huitzilopochtli.

Significantly, Sahagún (1956 1: 156) says that the figure was covered with a blanket decorated with a representation of a dismembered person (Coyolxauhqui?):

Below they put some bones made of tzoalli near the feet of the image, and these  [bones] were covered with the cloak that was decorated with bones and bodily parts  of a dismembered person; this cloak was called tlacuacuallo.

In both temples human sacrifice was the manner in which man repaid the gods for their sacrifice in creating or supporting mankind during a mythical era. The death of the deities led to the reenactment of the cosmogonic and anthropogenic myths. In the concrete case of Panquetzaliztli, the ritual is clearly a reenactment of the mythical battle of Huitzilopochtli and the death of a deity (Coyolxauhqui); it is also the triumph of the sun and, therefore, of life.

The presence of both gods on the top of the double hill is related to important mythical aspects and indicates the need of the Mexica for water and sun. It is not by chance that Tlaloc and the deities related to maize and

water were assigned the largest number of monthly feasts, for agricultural fertility was crucial to these agrarian people. The prominence given to Huitzilopochtli is likewise to be expected, for he is the warrior and the sun god.

OFFERINGS OF THE TEMPLO MAYOR

The last topic covered in this essay pertains to the offerings placed within the Templo Mayor. As of September 1979, our excavations have revealed about thirty offerings in different contexts and locations within the various construction phases of building (Fig. 10). Most are located in specific areas. The most common locale is in front of the main (western) facade, where up to fifteen offerings have been found.

On the southern facade, two offerings (7 and 9) were uncovered at the foot of the serpent head and two braziers that mark the middle of the pyramid. At the back (east facade), Offerings 21 and 8 are each located at the mid-points of the temples of Tlaloc and Huitzilopochtli, respectively; Offerings 17 and 20 are situated at the junction of both temples.

In general, the objects found in the offerings contain much useful archaeological information. Approximately eighty percent of the material from these thirty offerings comes from areas ruled by Tenochtitlan. There are materials from the Gulf Coast (snailshells, conch shells, crocodile heads, fish and jaguar remains, coral, etc.) (Fig. 11) and from the Mixteca (household idols and pottery), and a large number of objects from the state of Guerrero (like the typical Mezcala-style figures and a large number of masks) (Figs. 12-14). From Chamber 2, which is characterized by having material only from Guerrero, come masks that have glyphs on the backs (Figs. 15-17), which leads me to believe that these masks came from tax-paying towns and that the glyphs are a form of receipt to prove delivery. A more in-depth study of these masks is underway.

There are offerings that are interesting because of their special contents. Offering 7, on the south side, has only marine or coastal material and snail shells, all oriented to the south. Offerings 18 and 19, located at the base of the main (western) facade in line with the junction of the two temples, are comprised of stone boxes that contain thirteen statues from Guerrero, all facing south. Offering 20, in the back facade below where the two temples meet, contains a Teotihuacan mask (Fig. 18) and the oldest object of the excavations—an Olmec mask (Fig. 19)—both in association with Mexica materials from the distant areas mentioned above.

Offerings 10 and 14, in the main facade at the foot of the Huitzilopochtli stairway, are actually funerary urns (Figs. 20, 21). They are two orange clay pots with lids, inside of which are the remains of incinerated bones

Fig. 17 Mezcala-style mask with inlaid eyes and teeth found in Chamber 2, and the glyph painted on its back.

Fig. 18 Teotihuacan mask with obsidian inlay in the eyes, found in Offering 20.

Fig. 19 Olmec jade mask found in Offering 20.

Fig. 20 Offering 24, funerary vessel of orange ceramic with a relief panel depicting Tezcatlipoca.

Fig. 21 Offering 10, funerary vessel of orange ceramic with a relief panel depicting Quetzalcoatl.

and other objects. Both vessels have richly decorated panels that represent, possibly, Quetzalcoatl or Xiuhtecutli (Offering 10) (Fig. 21) and Tezcatlipoca (Offering 14) (Fig. 20). Could these vessels possibly refer to the myth of the cosmic battle between these two deities, since each deity is armed with an atlatl and carries a handful of darts? Do they comprise a representation of the Legend of the Suns? More serious studies are needed on this subject.

In general, most of the objects in the offerings are related to Tlaloc and Huitzilopochtli. Marine objects and statues and effigy vessels of the water god (Figs. 22, 23) are abundant. However, there are also a number of skulls with flint knives stuck in the nose and mouth and with shell inlays in the eyes (Fig. 24); the presence of the tecpatl, the weapon of Huitzilopochtli, clearly refers to this warrior god and to sacrifice, as do the materials imported from areas under Mexica rule. Our excavations have revealed not a single complete human body, but only the skulls of beheaded individuals, a significant fact that is probably related to the beheading of Coyolxauhqui. I would like to emphasize, however, that this offering material still remains to be studied completely.

Fig. 24 Human skull with shell and hematite inlaid in the eye sockets and flint knives set into the mouth and nose cavity, from Offering 11.

In summary, the four themes addressed here show that the Templo Mayor is a physical manifestation of the birth and triumph of Huitzilopochtli and the need for human sacrifice to reenact this mythological event. The temple expresses the agricultural requirements of the Mexica for water and sun, and it reflects clearly the economic and political power Tenochtitlan exercised over other people; it is a place of glory for the Mexica and of disgrace for those who were subjugated.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alvarado Tezozomoc, Fernando

1944 Cronica Mexicana (Manuel Orozco y Berra, ed.). Editorial  Leyenda, Mexico.

1975 Crónica Mexicayotl (Adrian Leon, ed.). 2nd ed. Instituto de  Investigaciones Históricas, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de  Mexico, Mexico.

Broda, Johanna

1978 Relaciones politicas ritualizadas: El ritual como expresión de  una ideología. In Economía política e ideología en el México  prehispánico (Pedro Carrasco and Johanna Broda, eds.): 221—255.  Editorial Nueva Imagen, Mexico.

Casas, Bartolomé de Las

1965 Historia de las Indias (Agustín Millares Carlo and Lewis  Hanke, eds ). 3 vols. Fondo de Cultura Economica, México.

CortÉs, Hernando

1977    Fernando Cortes, His Five Letters of Relation to the Emperor  Charles V (Francis Agustus MacNutt, ed.). 2nd ed. Rio Grande Press,  Glorieta, New Mexico.

DÍaz del Castillo, Bernal

1943 Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España. Nuevo  Mundo, Mexico.

Duran, Diego

1951 Historia de las Indias de Nueva-España y Islas de Tierra Firme  (Jose F. Ramirez, ed.). 2nd ed., 2 vols. Editora Nacional, México.

Eliade, Mircea

1959 The Sacred and the Profane. The Nature of Religion (Willard R.  Trask, trans,). Harcourt Brace and Co., New York.

León-Portilla, Miguel

1978    México-Tenochtitlan: su espacio y tiempo sagrados. Instituto  Nacional de Antropología e Historia, México.

Lesur, Yólotl G. de

1967 El dios Huitzilopochtli en la peregrinación mexica de Aztlan  a  Tula. Anales del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia 19: 175- 190. México.

Matos Moctezuma, Eduardo

1978 Muerte a filo de obsidiana. Los nahuas frente a la muerte. 2nd ed.  Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, México.

1982 El Templo Mayor: Economía e ideología. In El Templo Mayor:  Excavaciones y estudios (Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, ed.): 109-118.  Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, México.

Sahagún, Bernardino de

1956 Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España (Angel María  Garibay  K., ed.). 4 vols. Porrúa, México.

¹

Most scholars have thought that Díaz del Castillo was describing the main temple of Tlatelolco, but I believe he was referring to Tenochtitlan. In the beginning of his report, Díaz del Castillo clearly mentions Moctezuma going to the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan for certain ceremonies, and that the Spaniards leave the Mexica ruler there while they visit Tlatelolco, from which I believe they returned to the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan, because Díaz del Castillo again talks about Moctezuma, accompanied by priests, still making offerings at the top of the temple.

Memory Clothing: Costumes Associated with Aztec Human Sacrifice

PATRICIA RIEFF ANAWALT

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES

In the course of research into depictions of ancient Mesoamerican clothing, I have become increasingly impressed with the ability of certain long-gone garments to reveal clues to their past histories and hence to provide keys to unlock that past. This is particularly true of clothing associated with such an awesome event as human sacrifice, a phenomenon which infused its attendant ritual paraphernalia with highly charged emotional connotations. There is still an aura surrounding the accoutrements of sacrifice; these ritual objects retain a sense of high drama whose poignant impact lingers on. To the degree that depictions of sacrificial garments retain information regarding their pasts, such clothing truly can be said to hold memory. It is with the tapping of that memory bank that this investigation is concerned.

Four particular costumes are found in association with human sacrifice; each of these examples of memory clothing will be explored using the following assumptions:

1) A garment displays memory when its appearance signals a symbolic message. This ability to convey meaning will be demonstrated by the quemitl, a biblike costume associated with god effigies and deity impersonators.

2) A garment displays memory when it contains clues that reveal its homeland and the attendant connotations that area held for subsequent peoples. This ability to convey origins will be demonstrated by the quech-quemitl, a poncholike garment worn by effigies of goddesses and their deity impersonators.

3) A garment displays memory when the same costume occurs in several different cultures, yet is utilized for contrasting purposes. This ability to convey information on cross-cultural variation will be demonstrated by the xicolli, a male sleeveless jacket whose principal diagnostic is a differentiated hemline.

4) A garment displays memory when it regularly occurs in a specific context, worn in two predictably contrasting styles, each of which reflects a different cultural affiliation. This ability to mirror historical change will be demonstrated by the maxtlatl, the basic, ubiquitous Mesoamerican male loincloth.

Each of these examples of memory clothing will be discussed at three levels: first, by a brief description of the costume and the range of its distribution in the Mesoamerican codices; second, in the way the garment related to human sacrifice; third, by the manner in which the costume conveyed its particular message in Aztec society.

QUEMITL

The garment that demonstrates the ability of memory clothing to convey meaning is the quemitl, a word that no doubt derives from the Nahuatl term quemi, “to put on a manta or cape” (Molina 1970: 88v). Eduard Seler (1900-1901: 112), the great turn-of-the-century German scholar, defines the quemitl as a chest cape or, more descriptively, as a short apron or bib which the Indians tied around the neck of their idols. Garments meeting this description occur in Aztec ritual pictorials as well as certain of the Borgia Group codices. The quemitl also appears in pictorials from the Mixtec and Tlaxcala areas.

A depiction of the quemitl is found in the Tonalamatl Aubin (trecena 16). It is worn by Xolotl, ruler of the sixteenth period of the tonalamatl. Nicholson (1967: 81-82) suggests that this pictorial, which has a crudeness of style, may have come from the Otomi region on the mountainous eastern frontier of the Tlaxcala area. The quemitl also occurs on male figures in some of the Mixtec codices (i.e. on 8 Deer [Codex Zouche-Nuttal 82], on a priest [Codex Becker I 16], as part of a name glyph [Codex Vindobonensis 8 obverse]). Both male¹ and female² deities wear the garment in the Central Mexican ritual Borgia Group codices.

In the Aztec pictorials, the quemitl is depicted in a very distinctive and stylized manner with a straight horizontal tie and attached biblike apron, often divided vertically at the hem into four or five sections (Fig. 1). This godly bib is found in association with a number of deities and/or god impersonators,³ sometimes drawn in such a way as to appear an adjunct to the rest of a deity’s costume.⁴ The quemitl particularly occurs in conjunc-

¹i.e., the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer (25, 36), Codex Vaticanus B (30), and Codex Borgia (24, 26).

²i.e., the Codex Laud (11D, 15D) and Codex Fejérváry-Mayer (3).

³i.e., the Codex Borbonicus (32, 36) and Codex Magliabechiano (47r, 87r).

⁴i.e., the Codex Magliabechiano (47r, 87r) and Codex Vaticanus A (43V).

Fig. 1 A depiction of a quemitl which here serves as a symbol for the fifth annual veintena ceremony, Toxcatl (after Codex Magliabechiano 32r).

tion with Tlaloc, either worn by him,¹ depicted in close physical proximity to him,² or superimposed over the pictograph for mountain on top of which Tlaloc is shown³ (Fig. 2). The godly bib also appears as part of place-name glyphs⁴ and as ritual parapernalia in scenes of the great annual public ceremonies.⁵ It is in this latter context that the association of the quemitl with human sacrifice is particularly revealing.

Fray Diego Durán (1967, 1: 148—149), in describing the great annual harvest festival of Ochpaniztli, states that the final stage of this important ceremony involved a public display—on a centrally located, raised platform—of the flayed skin of a previously sacrificed goddess impersonator. For this last section of the ceremony, the woman’s skin was stuffed with straw, again dressed in the goddess’s distinctive clothing, and then carefully stretched out by the attendant priests. It is precisely this scene (Fig. 3) that is

Fig. 2 The quemitl is worn by Tlaloc, the agricultural deity associated with rain. Tlaloc’s temple is depicted atop a mountain upon whose pictograph a second quemitl is superimposed (after Codex Borbonicus 24).

Fig. 3 A platform decorated with a huge quemitl upon which is being placed the clothed, flayed skin of an impersonator of the agricultural fertility goddess Centeotl-Chicomecoatl. This is part of the annual harvest festival, Ochpaniztli, the eleventh veintena ceremony (after Codex borbonicus 31).

Fig. 4 A quemitl-decorated platform, sans sacrificed body, which apparently depicts rituals associated with the final phase of the harvest festival, Ochpaniztli (after Codex Borbonicus 32).

depicted in the Codex Borbonicus. Note that the platform is designated by a huge quemitl spotted with evenly spaced dots of liquid rubber. In addition, large red and yellow imitation cobs of corn—no doubt made of paper—line the sides of the quemitl-decorated platform. Here the bib of the gods is utilized to receive a deity’s most precious offering, the gift of human life.

This association of the quemitl with human sacrifice is made again on the following page of the Codex Borbonicus (Fig. 4) which deals with the Hueypachtli celebration associated with Tlaloc and the mountain rain deities. This ceremony also involves the sacrifice of deity impersonators, but in this subsequent scene only the huge decorated quemitl is shown. The artist-priest who compiled the pictorial apparently thought there was no need to include again a sacrificed body; to the informed viewer, the symbolic message carried by the quemitl was sufficient. This same device of a quemitl-decorated platform depicted sans body also occurs in the ritual section of the Codex Vaticanus A (i2v).

In the Aztec ritual round of annual veintena ceremonies, the fifth festival was Toxcatl, which honored the premier Aztec gods, Tezcatlipoca and Huitzilopochtli. This celebration involved the sacrifice of impersonators of

Fig. 5 The place-glyph Teteutepec: a quemitl superimposed over the pictograph for mountain. Here it is the ideological meaning of the quemitl, “god,” which has been utilized by the artist-scribe (after Codex Mendoza 6v).

these two most revered of deities. In the ritual pictorial Codex Magliabechiano (32), this very important festival is conveyed not by illustrations of impersonators of one or both of these important deities, or even with depictions of their very distictive costumes, but rather by a single quemitl (see Fig. 1).

The ability of the quemitl to convey the meaning of godliness—both in the sense of the garment being the bib of the gods and human sacrifice being the ultimate act of godly piety—is particularly evident in its abstract use as a component of one particular place-name glyph, Teteutepec (Codex Mendoza 7v). The case of its application here is unique although the quemitl also occurs in several other place-name glyphs but only as a pictographic phonic element. For example, the town of Tequemecan (Codex Mendoza 2or) is represented by a rock, tell, and the quemitl; the town of Aztequemeca combines the head of a heron, azta, with the quemitl (Codex Mendoza 21v).

In these two examples, the quemitl was employed only for its phonic value. However, in the place-name glyph Teteutepec (Fig. 5), a quantum leap has been made. No longer is the sound of the word quemitl important; this phonic element does not even occur in Teteutepec. Instead, the quemitl has now lost its straightforward pictographic value and has been elevated almost in an abstract sense; what has been selected out is its ideological meaning. In the place-name glyph Teteutepec, the tepec element is the hill. But teteu means “gods” and it is the quemitl, godly bib of the deities, that has been chosen to convey this sacred meaning. And it is precisely in this sense that the quemitl also occurs in the above-mentioned contexts of human sacrifice. Symbolic ritual meaning was instantly conveyed by the use of a well-known symbol for the gods, the quemitl. It is our first example of memory clothing.

Fig. 6 The most common way of constructing a modern quechquemitl (after Anawalt 1981: fig. 14).

QUECHQUEMITL

The garment that demonstrates the ability of memory clothing to reveal origins is the quechquemitl, a triangular-appearing shoulder-cape type costume (Fig. 6) whose name probably derives from the Nahuatl term quechtli, “neck,” and quemit, “to put on a manta or cape” (Molina 1970: 88v). A study of the clothing worn at the time of the Spanish Conquest (Anawalt 1981) revealed that some form of the quechquemitl was utilized throughout Mesoamerica. There are depictions of it on goddesses from the Maya area (Anawalt 1981: 184-186), as well as the Tlaxcala region (Tonalamatl Aubin trecena 7). Illustrations in the Relación de Michoacán show the garment worn by upper-class women and goddesses (Anawalt 1981: 89—91). In the Mixtec codices the quechquemitl also appears on goddesses, but it is mainly the high-born Mixtec ladies who wear the costume (Anawalt 1981: 127— 130). Among the Aztecs, however, the quechquemitl was utilized only as special-purpose clothing for effigies of goddesses and their impersonators (Fig. 7). And it is this limiting of the quechquemitl to ritual contexts that explains its connection with Aztec human sacrifice.

At the great ceremonies where one particular sacrifice was singled out to be the publicly displayed climax of the festival, the underlying principle was to sacrifice an image of the god to the god. And it is precisely at this

Fig. 7 An impersonator of the goddess Mayahuel wears the quechquemitl (after Codex Magliabechiano 58r).

level of belief that the quechquemitl is related to human sacrifice. Since in Aztec culture the wearing of the quechquemitl was restricted to certain goddesses, impersonators of these deities by definition went to their deaths attired in this distinctive garment. As a result, the quechquemitl was sometimes an indispensible element in conveying the full meaning of certain featured human sacrifice rituals. The Codex Borbonicus makes this point graphically in its four scenes of the harvest festival, Ochpaniztli, the last phase of which was discussed above in regard to the quemitl.

The initial scene of Ochpaniztli depicts the impersonator of the agricultural fertility goddess Centeotl-Chicomecoatl¹⁰ (Fig. 8). Following her sacrifice, the flayed skin of the female impersonator, together with her quechquemitl and skirt, is worn by the male sacrificing priest who now takes the role of the impersonator of Centeotl-Chicomecoatl (Fig. 9). In this particularly dramatic scene, the “goddess” is seen surrounded by her corn maidens and Huastec helpers. The combining of the quechquemitl with a fertility goddess and an ethnic group from the Gulf Coast is most revealing, as a detailed analysis of the quechquemitl has shown (Anawalt 1982).

The investigation of the origins of the quechquemitl and its symbolic

¹⁰Aztec fertility goddesses are often found in association with combined iconographic features of several deities. This is particularly true of maize goddesses (see Nicholson 1964); the impersonator depicted in the Codex Borbonicus Ochpaniztli ceremony is shown in costume and accoutrements that combine iconography of Chicomecoatl and Centeotl, who is usually designated as male but occasionally is also presented as female (see Nicholson 1971).

Fig. 8 An impersonator of an agricultural fertility goddess whose costume displays the combined iconography of the female aspects of Centeotl and the corn goddess Chicomecoatl (after Codex Borbonicus 30).

Fig. 9 A male priest wears a sacrificed female’s flayed skin and apparel which includes the quechquemitl. The “goddess” is surrounded by her entourage, which includes dancers costumed as Huastecs, a Gulf Coast ethnic group (after Codex Borbonicus 30).

connotations was carried out by analyzing 125 depictions of the garment as it appeared in eleven Central Mexican ritual pictorials (Anawalt 1982: app. A and B). The costume was worn by fifteen different goddesses, seven of whom were part of the fertility or mother goddess category of Nicholson’s deity classification system (1971). This connection of the quechquemitl with mother goddesses provided the first indication of the costume’s homeland; the second clue involved the geographic areas where these fertility goddesses were especially revered.

The two regions where the mother goddess cult was particularly developed were the Gulf Coast and the chinampa zone of the Valley of Mexico. The similarity of emphasis suggests an earlier connection, for which there is indeed evidence. One of the principal towns of the chinampa region was Xochimilco. This center was particularly associated with the skilled lapidary artisans who carried out their major ceremonies there. Berdan (1981: 28n) points out that this group probably originated in the Huastec region; three of their four patron deities—Naualpilli, Centeotl, and Chantico— have Huastec attributes.

Once the two centers of the mother goddess cult were determined, it was then necessary to ascertain in which of those areas the quechquemitl might have originated. The fertility goddess-quechquemitl association has considerable time depth in Central Mexico; figurines and other depictions of goddesses wearing the garment occurred both around the Toltec’s Tula and at the earlier Classic period site of Teotihuacan. However, all of the fertility connotations connected with the garment suggest it originated not on the somewhat arid Mesa Central but rather along the more verdant and prolific Gulf Coast. This conclusion was further reinforced by a Central-Gulf Coast connection during a traumatic period in Aztec history.

In the great famine of 1450-1455, the scarce food that was finally obtained was from the Gulf Coast. However, this Aztec association of the Gulf Coast with fertile abundance transcended mere subsistence. The lush and productive Huastec-Totonac region was famous among the Aztecs not only for proliferation of plant material but also for the sexual practices of its uninhibited people, who were a matter of fascination to the more circumspect Aztecs. Further, the women of the Huastec-Totonac region were famous for their skill in weaving and also for the style with which they wore their beautiful clothing. The typical and distinctive female garment of that region was the quechquemitl (Fig. 10), worn not only by the region’s desirable women but also by its goddesses.

For the Aztecs, then, the Gulf Coast held symbolic connotations of fertility with regard both to bountiful crops and to the sexual awareness of the people. All of these factors are evident in the Codex Borbonicus depiction

Fig. 10 A depiction of a Prehispanic Totonac woman wearing the typical female garment of the Gulf Coast, the quechquemitl (after Sahagún 1926, bk. 9: fig. 195).

of the stage of the Ochpaniztli ceremony in which the fertility goddess Centeotl-Chicomecoatl and her corn maidens are shown in association with her sexually explicit Huastecs. And the distinctive garment that the goddess wears is the quintessential female costume of the Gulf Coast, the quechquemitl, an example of memory clothing’s ability to provide dues to origin.

XICOLLI

The garment that demonstrates the ability of memory clothing to convey information on cross-cultural variation is the xicolli, a male sleeveless jacket whose principal diagnostic is a differentiated hemline (Fig. 11). The derivation of the term xicolli is unclear. No doubt the Nahuatl term for shoulder, acolli, is the second element (Molina 1970: 2v). The initial form, xi, may be related in some way to the weaving term xiotl, “heddle for warping cloth and weaving” (Molina 1970, I59v).

Among the Aztecs the xicolli was utilized only as a special-purpose ritual garment. A detailed analysis of the jacket (Anawalt 1976) indicates that it played an important role in Aztec ceremonials. A close examination of Sahagún’s twelve books of the Florentine Codex (1950-69), the most complete source of information on Aztec life, reveals that the xicolli can be

Fig. 11 A depiction of a xicolli on a catalog card from the Museum fur Völkerkunde, Berlin. Photography courtesy of the Museum fur Völkerkunde.

Fig. 12 Xicolli-clad priests performing human sacrifice (after Codex Magliabechiano 7or).

Fig. 13 An Aztec priest wearing the xicolli with a gourd of tobacco pellets on his back and carrying an incensario and incense bag (after Codex Mendoza 63 r).

identified with eight groups or categories: 1) idols; 2) gods; 3) god impersonators; 4) merchants and their sacrificial slaves; 5) pole decorations; 6) priests; 7) lords, chiefs, noblemen, and constables; and 8) metaphors (see Ana wait 1976: 227).

The reference to the xicolli in metaphors, and its use by lords, chiefs, noblemen, and constables, all testify to the garment’s utilization as a ritual symbol in public ceremonies. Its connection with the other six categories indicates close involvement with Aztec human sacrifice.

As with the quemitl and the quechquemitl, the repeated association of the xicolli with idols, gods, and god impersonators demonstrates the connection of the costume with Aztec deities, the forces propitiated through human sacrifice. In this context, the xicolli was worn in certain ceremonies by sacrificial slaves who, at the time of their death, were regarded as physical reflections of the gods. The slaves’ merchant sponsors also wore the garment. Sahagún mentions a xicolli, probably worn by a sacrificed prisoner of war, being used as a decoration atop a pole in the courtyard of a warrior who offered up his captive for sacrifice.

An extension of the xicolli’s role as the jacket of the gods is its repeated association with priests, who sometimes wore the costume while performing human sacrifice (Fig. 12). Three accessory items are often depicted together with a xicolli-clad priest: an incense burner, an incense bag, and a

Fig. 14 A Mixtec lord wearing the male high-status garment, the red xicolli (after Codex Bodley 14).

gourd tobacco-container worn on the back (Fig. 13). In varying combinations, these priestly accoutrements are found in association with xicolli-clad priests in four Aztec pictorials.¹¹

For the Aztecs, then, the xicolli was utilized only as a special-purpose ritual garment; it was never worn as daily apparel. However, this pattern of use was not consistent throughout Mesoamerica. The utilization of the xicolli for a range of social purposes is precisely the point of interest with regard to the garment as an example of memory clothing reflecting information on cross-cultural variation. This becomes most apparent when studying the occurrence of the xicolli in the Mixtec codices where it was the most commonly worn male costume (Anawalt 1980). Almost all of the Mixtec lords wear red xicolli; the jacket apparently was associated with the ruling class (Fig. 14). In addition, the Mixtec had a white-with-black-dots version of the godly jacket which their priests wore, and Mixtec xicolli were also utilized as ritual offerings (Fig. 15).

Although the xicolli is ubiquitous in the Mixtec pictorials, it appears only twice in the five core members of the Borgia Group codices.¹² Since these all have a ritual content, it is not surprising that both depictions are

¹¹The Codex Azcatitlan (12), Codex Magliabechiano (63r), Codex Mendoza (631-), and Codex Xolotl (map 4).

¹²In the Codex Laud (8) and Codex Fejérváry-Mayer (27).

of xicolli-clad priests. One is performing a human sacrifice, the other is making a votive offering of incense and rubber.

For the Conquest-period Lowland Maya, the only depiction of a xicolli is as an offering (Codex Madrid 84), but both the Relaciones geográficas (Anawalt 1981: 186) and Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1967, 1: 15) state that the Prehispanic Maya men wore the jacket in daily life. From the writings of Fray Motolinía (1971: 78-79) we know that the Tlaxcalans had the xicolli in their costume repertory.

Pushing backward in time to the Early Postclassic, Durán (1967, 1: 78-79) reports that the Toltec wore the xicolli, and he illustrates a long version of the garment in his Atlas (Durán 1967, 1: lam. 2). However, a reconstruction of the Toltec costume repertory (Anawalt n.d.) failed to reveal any trace of the garment in the Toltec archaeological record. The xicolli did appear, however, in Toltec-occupied Yucatan, but worn by the Maya and in a martial context (Fig. 16). There is historical depth for this association of the jacket with warfare; Late Classic Jaina figurines sometimes wear the jacket together with the rectangular shield (e.g. Berkic n.d.: pl. 63). However, when the xicolli appears along the northern Gulf Coast at the Huastec site of Tamuin in the Early Postclassic, it has lost its martial associations. Instead it appears in a religious procession, believed by Du Solier (Marquina 1951: 415) to be concerned with Quetzalcoatl (Fig. 17).

The xicolli, with its distinctive cut and differentiated hem area, is unique among Mesoamerican garments, and hence its appearance in a society’s costume repertory is particularly memorable. But the memories carried by this highly visible jacket are far from static. Among Mesoamerican Indian groups the costume has served contrasting social purposes, utilized alternatively as military jacket, ceremonial offering, secular aristocratic apparel, and special-purpose religious garment. Obviously, it is memories of cross-cultural variation that are conveyed by the xicolli, our third example of memory clothing.

MAXTLATL

The final example of memory clothing is the most humble and pervasive of Mesoamerican male garments, the loincloth, known in Nahuatl as the maxtlatl. Simeon’s (1965: 237) Nahuatl dictionary gives the fullest description: “Belt, loincloth or a broad strip of cloth descending almost to the thighs.”

The point of interest for this investigation of the loincloth reflecting memories of historical change is that the Nahuatl speakers of the Valley of Mexico wore the garment in two distinct styles. The first—by far the most widespread throughout Mesoamerica (Anawalt 1981: 209)—was a narrow piece of material worn wrapped around the waist, passed between the legs, and then knotted either in the back or front with the two ends falling before and behind (Fig. 18). This manner of wearing the garment, which I will henceforth refer to as the long-style loincloth, dates back well into the Classic period. The second type of maxtlatl was very different; after being wrapped around the lower torso, both ends of the loincloth were brought to the front of the body and tied in a very distinctive manner which I shall refer to as the Aztec knot (Fig. 19).

I began my investigation of these two loincloth styles with the assumption that each reflected a past cultural affiliation, and that the two types carried mutually exclusive meanings. Based on prior experience, I assumed these meanings could be revealed by sorting out the contexts in which the two styles appeared. That approach did not produce the results anticipated. Nevertheless, the data involved may well be of value for future research and hence are presented here.

Fig. 20 The future Mexica of Tenochtitlan depicted wearing the Aztec knot during their early wanderings prior to reaching the Valley of Mexico (after Duran 1967, 2: lam. 3).

In investigating the maxtlatl, I tested four alternative hypotheses. So that the reader can follow the steps taken, this intellectual flailing about is best explained in a straightforward narrative style.

The first hypothesis which logically could explain the two contrasting loincloths was an ethnic one. In the Codex Mendoza, the most detailed pictorial record of Aztec secular life, the Mexica of Tenochtitlan are depicted throughout wearing the Aztec knot. Since the Mexica were the last of the Chichimec groups to arrive in the Valley of Mexico, it seemed logical to suppose their loincloth might be a newer, intrusive version as opposed to the established long style. This hypothesis was reinforced by Durán.

In the historical treatise of Duran’s Historia, the friar depicts the long-style loincloth throughout, with two important exceptions: 1) his initial scene where the Mexica are shown wearing the Aztec-knot loincloth as they leave their ancestral home in Aztlan (Duran 1967, 2: lam. 1); and 2) in a subsequent scene, illustrating their early wanderings out of the northern wilderness, the Mexica are still wearing the Aztec knot (Durán 1967, 2: lam. 3) (Fig. 20). (That this is the loincloth style typical of the “barbarian” northern deserts is repeatedly confirmed in the pictorial Historia Tolteca Chichimeca [Kirchof et al. 1976].) After the Mexica arrived in the Valley of Mexico, however, only the long-style loincloth is depicted.

I assumed this change of loincloth style reflected the merging of the Mexica with such previously established groups as the Culhua of Culhuacan and the Tepenacs of Azcapotzalco, both of whom prided themselves on their Toltec heritage. (Although both groups also had migrated earlier out of the Chichimec northern deserts, once they arrived in the Valley of Mexico they made a series of alliances with local residents which gave them claim to the esteemed Toltec background.) Since the Aztec knot does not appear in the Toltec costume repertory (see Lothrop 1952; Tozzer 1957), it seemed logical that the long-style loincloth, which no doubt represented the earlier traditional Toltec type, would be desirable to newly arrived Chichimecs who, once established, were eager to lay claim to Toltec descent. The late-arriving Mexica, however, apparently took pride in calling attention to their Chichimec heritage. Duran (1967, 1) added further weight to this ethnic hypothesis in the drawings of the ritual treatises volume of his work on the gods and rites and the ancient calendar.

Fig. 21 The conquest of Maxtlatl—the ruler of Azcapotzalco—who wears the Aztec knot (which is also his name glyph) by a Tlatelolcoan lord who wears the long-style loincloth (after Codex Telleriano-Remensis 3lr).

With only one possible exception (Duran 1967, 1: lam. 17), all of the males depicted in Duran’s ritual treaties—be they deities, priests, or sacrificed males—wear the Aztec knot. This seemed to confirm the ethnic hypothesis that the knot served to honor the Mexica’s Chichimec background. Unfortunately, subsequent investigation immediately ran this assumption afoul of the facts.

In the historical sections of the Codex Telleriano-Remensis and its cognate, the Codex Vaticanus A, the earlier scenes concerned with the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries show all warriors wearing the Aztec knot. This style terminates, however, on folio 31r (Fig. 21) which deals with the years 1424-1439; it depicts the death of Maxtlatl, ruler of Azcap-

otzalco. Note that this scion of a proud old “Toltec-descended” Tepenec dynasty does not wear the hypothesized long-style loincloth but rather the Aztec knot which also serves as his name glyph. To further muddy the water, Maxtlatl’s conqueror is the ruler of Tlatelolco—the Mexica twin city to the capital, Tenochtitlan—and wears the long-style loincloth. From folio 31r forward to the late scenes dealing with the Spanish, all of the warriors depicted in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis wear the long-style loincloth. This abrupt and complete changeover from one style to another, together with the evidence mentioned from Duran, had to be more than chance or a scribal whim. I was still convinced that some message was being conveyed—but what was it? Further perusal of the extant historical documents seemed in order.

For an analysis of clothing, the Historia de la Nacion Mexicana de 1576 (Codex Aubin) and the Codex Mexicanus are not drawn with sufficient detail to provide much data. The few loincloths that are visible appear to be of the long style. However, the garments in the Codex Azcatitlan, which relates the history of the Mexica of Tenochtitlan from 1168 to the Conquest, are clearly depicted. In the entire pictorial there is not an Aztec knot shown; all loincloths are the long style. This same type is the one depicted on the warriors of the Tizoc stone. In contrast, the Codex Xolotl, which relates the history of the ruling Tepenec dynasty of Texcoco, shows only the Aztec-knot-style loincloth. Obviously, there is conflicting data in the historical sources. Another approach was called for.

Since human sacrifice was the most profound of ritual acts, and all of the accoutrements connected with it had special meaning, such scenes should offer insight into the messages conveyed by the two styles of loincloth. In the entire Aztec pictorial corpus, there are only thirty-six scenes that provide a detailed view of the human who is being sacrificed. Two of these involve women;¹³ of the thirty-four males depicted, only nineteen are drawn in such a manner that the loincloths are shown. Seven wear the Aztec knot;¹⁴ twelve scenes show the long style.¹⁵ In an attempt to determine what meaning this distribution had, I plotted context of each ceremony against social and ethnic identity of those sacrificed. This seemed logical because, while it is true that all sacrifices to the gods were sacred, they surely varied in degree. There had to have been a marked contrast between the religious celebrations involving a carefully chosen and deli-

¹³In Sahagún (1950—69, bk. 1: fig. 28) and the Codex Telleriano-Remensis (38v) (and the cognate Codex Vaticanus A [80v]).

14 In Sahagún (1950-69, bk. 9: fig. 10), Durán (1967, 1: lams. 7, 15, 21), and the Codex Magliabechiano (40r, 66r, 70r).

l5 In Sahagún (1950-69, bk. 1: fig. 41; bk. 2: fig. 52), Durán (1967, 2: lams. 16, 24), and the Codex Telleriano-Remensis (32V, 38V, 39r, 40r, 40V, 41r, 41V, 42V).

Fig. 22 Musicians wearing the Aztec knot loincloth when they perform for a merchant’s banquet (after Sahagún 1979, bk. 9: 30v).

cately nurtured impersonator of Tezcatlipoca and a ceremony utilizing a long line of anonymous war prisoners from distant provinces offered up in mass lots. Unfortunately, the chart revealed no pattern. This may be because there simply is not sufficient data to categorize properly the participants in each sacrificial scene. In any event, a different approach was required; I resorted to Sahagún.

A careful examination of the 1841 illustrations in the Florentine Codex reveals that there are only twenty-six depictions clearly showing how a maxtlatl was worn (i.e. both ends of the loincloth visible).¹⁶ Ten of these are the Aztec knot worn in a secular context; five of these loincloths appear on musicians who are performing for a feast¹⁷ (Fig. 22). Two long-style loincloths also involve musicians; one man blows a shell before the temple of Tlaloc where a goddess impersonator is being sacrificed (Fig. 23); the other is performing during the annual festival of Toxcatl (Sahagún 1950-69, bk. 2: fig. 19). The implication is that the long style was associated with religion, the Aztec knot with the secular world. The extant Aztec ritual pictorials definitely bear this out.

In each of the four principal Aztec ritual pictorials, (the Codices Bor-

¹⁶Sahagún 1950-69, bk. 1: figs. 28, 35; bk. 2: figs. 19, 30, 32, 33, 35; bk. 3: fig. 4; bk. 4: figs. 11, 19, 44, 45, 58, 59; bk. 5: fig. 6; bk. 8: figs. 64, 69, 87, 88; bk. 9: figs. 10, 14, 31; bk. 10: figs. 32, 70; bk. 12; figs, so, 52.

¹⁷Sahagún 1950-69, bk. 4; fig. 19; bk. 8: figs. 64, 69, 88; bk. 9: fig. 31.

bonicus, Magliabechiano, Telleriano-Remensis, and Vaticanus A), the gods or god impersonators whose maxtlatls are visible all wear the long style, whereas the subservient males all wear the Aztec knot. Since ritual accoutrements change very slowly, I suspected that—Duran to the contrary—I might at last have found a pattern, a temporal explanation: the gods wear an old type of loincloth, the long style; mere mortals wear the new Aztec knot. I then turned to depictions of loincloths on extant Aztec sculpture for verification. The hypothesis did not verify.

In a study of the clothing depicted on the Aztec sculpture in the collection of the Museo de Antropología in Mexico City (Solís Olguín n.d.), twenty loincloths are included. Fourteen of these are some version of the Aztec knot; the remaining six appear to be the long style (since only the front of the figure is shown it is difficult to be completely certain). To confuse the issue further, in the catalog (Garda Cantu 1980) of the cache material from the Templo Mayor excavation, two standard bearers are shown; one wears the Aztec knot, the other the long style. Since these figures date from at least the early fifteenth century (H. B. Nicholson, personal communication, April 1980), the time of the ruler Maxtlatl’s conquest by the ruler of Tlatelolco, this dichotomy of loincloth styles obviously has considerable time depth.

Since neither the temporal nor religious-versus-secular hypotheses proved to explain the data fully, I returned again to ethnicity, but now at the community level. In a recent study of the provenience of the Codex Borbonicus, Nicholson (n.d.) suggests that neither that magnificent ritual pictorial nor the Codex Magliabechiano or Telleriano-Remensis/Vaticanus A were compiled in the Mexica capital of Tenochtitlan. Probably there are no ritual codices extant from that great center. This could mean that the maxtlatl variance—not only in the ritual manuscripts but in the historical documents as well—reflects the preference of the communities where the pictorials were made. For example, Nicholson suggests that the Codex Borbonicus may have originated in the Itztapalapan-Culhuacan region of the chinampa zone. One of the factors supporting this argument is the strong emphasis on the Ochpaniztli ceremony, which highlights the quechquemitl-wearing mother-goddess cult. Once again, however, this line of investigation is thwarted by insufficient evidence. There simply is not enough information on the precise locale where most of the Aztec pictorials were compiled.

In addition to hypotheses involving ethnicity, context, or temporal factors, it also must be acknowledged that there is yet another possible explanation for the maxtlatl muddle: randomness. Perhaps the frustrated attempts to understand the inconsistent maxtlatl distribution has been

Fig. 23 Musicians and priests wearing the long-style maxtlatl at the sacrifice of a goddess impersonator (after Sahagún 1979, bk. 1: 6r).

defeated by Aztec personal whim or scribal inclination. Perhaps the people, and the scribes who recorded them, sometimes chose one style, other times another. Perhaps this choice was tied to events, or to status, or to just plain personal preference. Perhaps what the maxtlatl inconsistency really reflects is mere humanness.

SUMMARY

This investigation has focused on four distinctive garments associated with Aztec human sacrifice. In the cases of the quechquemitl (with its memory of Gulf Coast origins) and the xicolli (with its memories of cross-cultural variation) it is of particular interest that the Aztecs utilized both costumes only as special-purpose attire. Considering the nature of the Aztec pantheon, which was always open to the incorporation of other people’s deities, it is not surprising that the Aztecs absorbed the foreign quechquemitl and xicolli only in a ceremonial context. Acculturation studies (e.g. Keesing 1953; Redfield et al. 1936) have demonstrated that it is not uncommon for an outside trait to become highly specialized when it is absorbed into a more complex context. Further, foreign traits usually

are absorbed in clusters. It is logical, therefore, that the presence of these special-purpose garments in the Aztec costume repertory is a visual reminder of an earlier absorption into Central Mexico of religious concepts originating in the Gulf Coast certainly for the quechquemitl and perhaps for the xicolli as well, considering the evidence from the Huastec ceremonial center of Tamuin (see Fig. 17).

This acculturation explanation for special-purpose garments should also apply to the quemital since the Aztecs limited the deities’ bib—with its symbolic message of divinity—to ritual. It is therefore particularly puzzling that no earlier prototypes have yet come to light. Since the Aztecs, Chichimecs all, drew so much ritual paraphernalia from their esteemed Early Postclassic Toltec predecessors, this lack of earlier quemitl depictions is surprising. Perhaps further investigation will clarify the mystery.

And the maxtlatl, what of it? Am I really ready to concede that the existence of the two distinct Aztec loincloths contain no memories of past cultural affiliation? Despite my failure to break that code, I must answer, no. Prior experience argues that every nuance of Mesoamerican iconography exists to convey a particular message; my work with costume has borne this out repeatedly. Then why is the maxtlatl section of the sacrificial-costume memory archive failing to release its data? I am not certain; perhaps due to insufficient sample, a problem future excavation and research may alter. Whatever the outcome, obviously the maxtlatl messages over time have tended to dim and become confused, but, of course, that too is the nature of memory.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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1967    Codex Madrid (Codex Tro-Cortesianus). Museo America, Madrid (F.  Anders, ed.). Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, Graz.

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Codex Mendoza

1938 Codex Mendoza. The Mexican Manuscript Known as the Collection of  Mendoza and Preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (James Cooper  Clark, trans. and ed.). 3 vols. Waterlow & Sons, London.

Codex Mexicanus

1952 Codex Mexicanus. Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris, Nos. 23-24. Société  des Americanistes, Paris.

Codex Telleriano-Remensis

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Codex Vaticanus A

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1972    Codex Vaticanus B (3773). Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana  (Ferdinand Anders, ed.). Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, Graz.

Codex Vindobonensis

1974 Codex Vindobonensis Mexicanus I. Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek,  Wien (Otto Adelhofer, ed.). Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt,  Graz.

Codex Xolotl

1951 Códice Xolotl (Charles Dibble, ed.). Universidad Nacional de  México and University of Utah, Mexico.

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1902 Codex Zouche-Nuttall. Facsimile of an Ancient Mexican Codex  Belonging to Lord Zouche of Harynworth, England (Zelia Nuttall, ed.).  Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge.

Díaz del Castillo, Bernal

1967 the True History of the Conquest of New Spain (Alfred Percival Maud- slay, ed.). 5 vols. Hakluyt Society, 1908, London. Reprint, Kral’s  Reprint, Liechtenstein.

Durán, Diego

1967 Historia de las Indias de Nueva España de la Tierra Firme (Angel Ma.  Garibay K. ed.). 2 vols. Editorial Porrúa, Mexico.

Garcia Cantu, Gastón

1980 El arte del Templo Mayor. Secretaría de Educación Pública, Instituto  Nacional de Bellas Artes; Instituto Nacional de Antropología e  Historia, Mexico.

Historia de la Nación Mexicana

1963    Historia de la nación mexicana reproducción a todo color del Códice  de 1376 (Códice Aubin) (Charles E. Dibble, ed.). Ediciones José Porrúa  Turanzas, Madrid.

Kessing, Felix M.

1953 Culture Change. Stanford University Press, Stanford. 

Kirchhoff, Paul, Lina Odena Güemes, and Luís Reyes García

1976 Historia Tolteca Chichimeca. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e  Historia, Mexico.

Lothrop, S. F.

1952 Metals from the Cenote of Sacrifice Chichen Itza, Yucatan. Harvard  University, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Memoirs  10 (2). Cambridge.

Marquina, Ignacio

1951 Arquitectura prehispánica. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e  Historia, Mexico.

Molina, Alonso de

1970    Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana, y mexicana y catellana.  Editorial Porrúa, Mexico.

Motolinía, or Toribio de Benavente

1971    Memoriales o libro de las cosas de la Nueva España y de los naturales  de ella (Edmundo O’Gorman, ed.). Universidad Nacional Autonoma de  México, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, Mexico.

Nicholson, H. B.

1964    An Aztec Stone Image of a Fertility Goddess. Baessler-Archiv,  neue folge, 11 (1): 9-30.

1967 A Fragment of an Aztec Relief Carving of the Earth Monster.  Journal de la Société des Americanistes 16 (r): 81-94.

1971 Religion in Pre-Hispanic Central Mexico. In Handbook of Middle  American Indians (Robert Wauchope, Gordon F. Ekholm, and Ignacio  Bernal, eds.) 10: 395-446. University of Texas Press, Austin.

n.d. The Provenience of the Codex Borbonicus: An Hypothesis. To appear in  Homenaje a Thelma D. Sullivan, Instituto de Investigaciones Filógicas,  Mexico.

Redfield, Robert, R. Linton, and M. J. Herskovits

1936 Memorandun on the Study of Acculturation. American  Anthropologist 38: 149-152.

Relación de Michoacán

1956 Relación de Michoacán. Reproduction facsimil de M. s.c. IV. 5 de El  Escorial (José Tudela, Jose Nuñez, and Paul Kirchoff, trans. and eds.).  Aguilar, Madrid.

Sahagún, Bernardino de

1906-07 Primeros Memoriales. Manuscrito de Tepepulco. In Códices  matritenses del Palacio Nacional y de la Real Academia de la Historia  (Franciso del Paso y Troncosco, ed.) 6-8. Foto Tipia de Hauser e Menet,  Madrid.

1926 Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España. Edicion completa en  facsimile colorido del Codice Florentino que se conserva en la biblioteca  Laurenzio-Medicea de Florencia, Italia. Talleres Gráficos del Museo  Nacional de Arqueología, Historia, y Ethnografía, Mexico.

1950-69 Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain  (Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble, trans.). 11 vols.  University of Utah and School of American Research, Santa Fe.

1979 Codice Florentino, el manuscrito 218-20 de la colección Palatina de la  Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana. Archivo General de la Nacion, Mexico.

Seler, Eduard

1900-01 The Tonalamatl of the Aubin Collection. Duke of Loubat, London.

Simeon, Remi

1965 Dictionnaire de la langue nahuatl ou mexicaine. Akademische Druck-  u. Verlagsanstalt, Graz.

Solís, Olguín, Felipe R.

n.d. El estado Azteca y sus manifestaciones escultoricas: analisis de la  escultura antropomorfa. PhD dissertation, Instituto National de  Antropología e Historia, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México,  1982.

Tonalamatl Aubin

1901 The Tonalamatl of the Aubin Collection. Duke of Loubat, London.

Tozzer, Alfred M.

1957 Chichen Itza and Its Cenote of Sacrifice: A comparative Study of  Contemporaneous Maya and Toltec. Harvard University, Peabody  Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Memoirs 11 —12. Cambridge.

¹

i.e., the Codex Borbonicus (23—26, 32, 35).

²

i.e., the Codex Borbonicus (23, 26).

³

i.e., the Codex Borbonicus (24, 32, 35), Codex Telleriano-Remensis (4r), and Codex Vaticanus A (85r).

⁴

i.e., the Codex Mendoza (7V, 20r, 2iv twice, 22r, 46r) and Codex Xolotl (map 7).

⁵

⁹i.e., the Codex Borbonicus (31, 32), Codex Magliabechiano (32r 79r, 87r 90r, 91r), and Codex Vaticanus A (12v).

Ochpaniztli in Historical Perspective

BETTY ANN BROWN

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

No se el motivo que esta gente podía tener en hacer alarde este mes, como se ha dicho, pero sería posible que fuese en memoria de la guerra que tuvieron estos Mexicanos, con los Culhuas, donde se mostraron muy valientes cuando mataron la hija del rey, y la desollaron. Y por la victoria que su dios Huitziloposchtli les dió, contra sus enemigos, en cuyo servicio fue hecho este Sacrificio.¹

      Torquemada 1969: 276-277

Constant warfare was necessary to support the tribute economy of the expanding Aztec empire. For this reason, a large part of Aztec ideology dealt with war. This is particularly evident in the belief, developed and sustained by the Aztec elite, that the sun required the hearts of war captives for food (Sahagún 1975: 384; Caso 1958: 12-14). Aztec warriors went to war to “feed the sun” with the same conviction that many twentieth-century soldiers battled to “make the world safe for democracy.” Because many Aztec ceremonies dramatically expressed such ideology, it follows that these celebrations also dealt with warfare. The thesis of this paper is that one purpose of Aztec sacrificial ceremonies was to recall those wars that were important in the history of the formation and growth of the Aztec empire. After developing the thesis, analogies will be made to modern celebrations in the United States and in Indian Mexico.

This paper concentrates on the Aztec sacrificial ceremony called Ochpaniztli, or “The Sweeping of the Way,” and the inherent war symbolism therein. Carrasco (1971: 470), Sullivan (1976), and Broda (1970: 251, 1978: 106), among others, have suggested that war symbolism was an important part of Ochpaniztli. Their suggestions are expanded here as a means of determining just how the ritual components of Ochpaniztli related to Aztec military history. It will been seen that many elements of Ochpaniztli pertained specifically to the Aztec-Culhuacan war which Davies (1973: xv)

¹I thank Jeanette Peterson who reminded me of this quote.

Fig. 1 Codex Boturini (18) drawing of the capture of Huitzilhuitl.

dates 1343, and to the Culhuacan princess whose sacrifice by the Aztecs was the immediate cause of that war.

The story of the sacrifice of the Culhuacan princess is well known (see especially Durán 1964: 22-28).² The Aztecs were vassals of Culhuacan, a powerful lakeside city that considered itself heir to the Toltec culture. According to the Cronica Mexicayotl (1975: 48), and as illustrated in the Codex Boturini (Fig. 1), a Culhuacan ruler captured and sacrificed the Aztec leader Huitzilhuitl. As a symbol of their defeat and humiliation, the Aztecs had to give over the paraphernalia of their patron deity, Huitzilopochtli, to the Culhuacanos (Phillips 1884: 616). Huitzilopochtli, apparently angered by this, ordered the Aztecs to request that the Culhuacan ruler, Achitometl, give them his daughter, promising that she would become “mistress of the Aztecs and bride of their god” (Duran 1964: 26). Attracted by the idea that his daughter would become a living goddess, Achitometl complied. To transform the Culhuacan princess into a goddess worthy of marrying their patron, however, the Aztecs killed and flayed her, dressing a priest in her skin. Achitometl was invited to come worship the new goddess, but when he realized that the figure seated in the temple next to Huitzilopochtli was not his daughter, but rather a priest wearing his daughter’s skin, he was struck with horror.

¹The story of the conflict with Culhuacan and the first Toci sacrifice is found in many sources, including the Codex Ramirez (1979: 33-35), and is more recently summarized by Davies (1973: 32-34).

Huitzilopochtli had said that the flayed princess would be known as Toci or “My Grandmother,” and as Yaocihuatl, “The Woman of Discord” (Durán 1964: 26). Discord certainly ensued when Achitometl ordered the Culhuacanos to take up arms and to drive the Aztecs out of their domain. The Aztecs were defeated and humiliated—at one point they even had to hide in the water and among the lakeside reeds and rushes to avoid their pursuers (Durán 1964: 28). In despair, they moved on to Acatzintitlan, which they later renamed Mexicatzinco, a name compounded from the term Mexica which the Aztecs used to refer to themselves.

The Aztecs rapidly recovered from the defeat and soon after founded Tenochtitlan, which was to become the capital of their ever-expanding tribute empire. The defeat by Culhuacan, therefore, actually appears to have been an important impetus toward the Aztec establishment as an independent power. The change of the name of their first post-defeat settlement from Acatzintitlan to Mexicatzinco perhaps demonstrated this growing sense of national identity.

Although Culhuacan once had been strong enough to humiliate the ambitious Aztecs, it did not remain so for long. Only two years after the founding of Tenochtitlan (c. 1345), a short four years after their victory over the Aztecs, Culhuacan was destroyed (Codex Chimalpopoca 1975: 29, 161). The Codex Chimalpopoca (1975: 29) tells us that the destruction was from internal conflict, but other sources suggest that the Aztecs themselves had a hand in the defeat of their one-time oppressors. Codex Telleriano-Remensis 29r illustrates the Aztec conquest of Culhuacan, and the Codex Mendoza illustration (1r) of the founding of Tenochtitlan shows the Culhuacan conquest in visual proximity to the founding scene, a proximity that indicates that it was closely related to the establishment of the Aztec capital. If Wicke’s (1976) reading of the Tizoc Stone is correct, the Aztecs considered the conquest of Culhuacan of major historical importance, a hypothesis that is certainly reasonable, since the Aztecs must have seen this conquest as revenge for the humiliation they had suffered under Culhuacan (Fig.2).

After the Aztecs had reversed their formerly low position by conquering Culhuacan, relatives of the Aztec tlatoani (“king”) were placed on the Culhuacan throne. For example, the Codex Chimalpopoca (1975: 61) tells us that Montezuma II’s daughter was married to the ruler of Culhuacan in 1509. Throughout this period of shifting balance of power, the Aztecs continued to validate their ruling line by alluding to its descent from the Culhuacan nobility. When Tenoch, founder of Tenochtitlan, died, the Aztecs looked to Culhuacan for his successor (Durán 1964: 33-34). Acamapichtli, the first of the new dynastic line, was the son of an Aztec man and a Culhuacan princess. He was, in fact, the result of a marriage

Fig. 2 Tizoc Stone image of the conquest of Culhuacan.

that appears to have symbolically paralleled the union of the Aztec god Huitzilopochtli and the earlier Culhuacan princess-turned-goddess, Toci.

Duran’s account of the first Toci sacrifice indicates that the sacrifice was the cause of warfare. That future generations of Aztecs recalled the war with Culhuacan when they celebrated the feast honoring Toci is clear in Duran’s (1964: 245) statement that the sacrifice of Tlaxcalan prisoners performed during that feast was done “in memory of [the Aztecs] who had been wounded with arrows when they fled from Culhuacan and had hidden among the rushes and reeds in order not to be slaughtered. Remembering the wounds inflicted by arrows, caused by that goddess, they now offered [to] her men killed in an arrow sacrifice.”

In Duran’s statement, the goddess appears to be a symbol for the Culhuacan war, which was invoked when the Aztecs sacrificed their longtime foes, the Tlaxcalans. War symbolism appears to have been in evidence during Ochpaniztli, the Aztec ceremony said to honor Toci, which also alluded to the Culhuacan war. In order to determine just how the Ochpaniztli rituals refer to that war, however, it is necessary to analyze the early colonial accounts of Ochpaniztli, and to consider the symbolic import of the ceremony (Fig. 3).

TEXTUAL DESCRIPTIONS OF OCHPANIZTLI

The most extensive account of Ochpaniztli is found in Sahagún´s Florentine Codex (Sahagun 1951-70, bk. 2: 110-117), where the ceremony is discussed as the eleventh month of the Aztec calendar. Sahagún records that the ceremony began with the “hand-waving dance,” in which performers carried flowers and branches in their upraised hands. Next was mock warfare, in which the medicine women were split into two companies and did battle by throwing moss and leaves at each other. From one of these companies a woman was chosen to impersonate Toci. After the mock warfare, the female Toci-impersonator went to the marketplace. There she was surround by the priests of the corn goddess, Chicomecoatl, and instructed ritually to scatter cornmeal. According to Sahagún (1951 — 70, bk. 2: 112), she was then returned to the temple and decapitated. Her body was quickly flayed and a priest “flung on her skin.” The skin of her thigh was carried to Pochtlan and given as a mask to the impersonator of Toci’s son, Centeotl, the corn god.

Back at the temple, the priest wearing the flayed skin (that is, the priest who had been thus transformed into a second Toci impersonator) ascended the pyramid steps and then descended, accompanied by two men dressed as Huastecs, and by two other priests (Sahagún 1951-70, bk. 2: 112). The attendants of the priestly Toci impersonator performed a second kind of mock warfare as they accompanied her (the male priest in the female role) to the temple of Huitzilopochtli. This mock warfare was called “fighting with grass,” because straw brooms were carried as weapons.

When the priestly Toci impersonator reached Huitzilopochtli’s temple, she faced it in a displayed position, that is, with her arms and legs wide spread. She then approached the temple with the Centeotl impersonator (who now wore the serrated cap representing Itztlacoliuhqui, the frost [Sullivan 1976]). Sahagún (1951-70, bk 2: 113) records that, on the next day, nobles carefully adorned the priestly Toci impersonator, who subsequently sacrificed four war captives by removing their hearts. Other priests continued the sacrifices. Later, war chiefs carried the corn god mask (which had been made from the thigh skin of the female Toci impersonator) out of Tenochtitlan to enemy lands. When they tried to enshrine it in those lands, the enemy often objected violently. “On both sides, [men] were slain” (Sahagún 1951-70, bk. 2: 114).

Sahagún continues with an account of how the Aztec warriors then assembled according to their ranks, and were given numerous gifts— shields, weapons, capes, breech clouts, insignia—by their ruler. These insignia were displayed in another hand-waving dance. The following day

Ochpaniztli in Historical Perspective

was likewise celebrated by bestowal of warrior insignia and by the hand-waving dance. That night, priests of Chicomecoatl, wearing the flayed skins of sacrificed victims, scattered corn seeds at the temple of Huitzilopochtli, and priestesses of Chicomecoatl stood by, holding ears of corn on their backs.

Sahagún (1951-70, bk. 2: 116) indicates that the last part of the ceremony consisted of a race of the war chiefs to the Huitzilopochtli temple where the priestly Toci impersonator stood over a container of white feathers and chalk. The chiefs raced to grab the feathers and chalk, then left, “running swiftly.” The Toci impersonator stood there facing them and sent them forth by uttering war cries. When the Toci impersonator followed the racers, onlookers spat at her and cast flowers at her. Finally, priests removed Toci’s flayed skin and placed it on a wooden frame at the Tocititlan women’s shrine.

Duran’s (1971: 229-237) account does not differ significantly from Sahagún’s. However, Durán (1971: 229) says Ochpaniztli was the occasion of two celebrations, one dedicated to Toci, the other to Chicomecoatl. He tells of the woman chosen to impersonate Toci and says that she was made to weave maguey fiber clothing while youths danced before her. Next, she was led to the marketplace to sell what she had woven. He goes on to say (1971: 233) that a priest carried the woman on his back up the temple steps where she was sacrificed and flayed. Another priest donned the skin and was presented to the Aztec nobles, while flanked by attendants armed for war. Afterwards, the nobles performed a type of mock warfare called moyohual icalli, which Durán (1971: 234) says means “dar al baco,” translated by Horcasitas and Heyden as “to make a last remembrance.”³

After the mock warfare, according to Durán (1971: 235), an unusual sacrifice was performed: captive victims were forced to climb tall wooden poles and were then pushed off, to crash to their deaths below. A bowl of the victims’ blood was given to the Toci impersonator, whose attendants now carried brooms rather than real weapons. The Toci impersonator put her finger in the blood and tasted it, and then put her finger to the ground to taste the earth. Durán (1971: 235) says this rite was called nitzapaloa, “the tasting of chalk.” Afterwards, warriors ran up, racing to see who could first repeat the impersonator’s tasting rites, and mock warfare again broke out as the first warrior carried the bowl of blood from the temple to the Toci shrine. At the shrine, the toci skin was taken off the impersonator and placed on a straw figure which from then on represented the goddess.

³An alternative reading might be “to attack at dawn.” Yohual relates to night or dawn, and icalli may relate to icali, “to do battle” (James Lockhart, personal communication, 1979).

Other early colonial chronicles add little to these complex accounts of the Toci ceremony. Sahagún, in his Primeros Memoriales (Garibay 1948: 306-307), discusses the sacrifice of the Toci-impersonator, the dance of the nobles, the impersonator’s trip to the market, the mock warfare with broom weapons, another dance in which the nobles carried their war insignia, and a second ritual, war with figures wearing wooden masks. According to the Primeros Memoriales account (Garibay 1948: 307), the Toci impersonator was called Yaocihuatl, or “Woman of Discord,” precisely because of the mock battles. The Codex Magliabechiano (38V) includes a discussion of Toci as being the goddess who held brooms, as well as being goddess of sacrifices at roadside temples, dances, drinking, and the flaying and subsequent wearing of the skin. The Codex Tudela (21rv) records that the Ochpaniztli ceremony was held in conjunction with that of Chicomecoatl, that medicine men accompanied the Toci impersonator to the marketplace, and that when the impersonator was killed, her heart was carried to Huejotzinco, on the frontier of the enemy lands of Tlaxcala. The author of Tudela also discusses the thigh-skin mask that was placed, along with the flayed skin, on a wooden structure. According to the Tudela account, the Chicomecoatl impersonator was sacrificed by shooting an arrow through her neck; she was flayed, her skin worn in a dance, and her flesh eaten, whereas the Toci impersonator’s flesh was buried.

The author of the Motolinía Insert I (Motolinía 1971: 52) calls Ochpaniztli a fiesta for Centeotl, saying that a woman was sacrificed at Centeotl’s temple in each of the four barrios of Tenochtitlan.⁴ War heros came forth at this time and were awarded insignia by the Aztec ruler. In addition, the women brought dough figures (the men brought reeds and corn cobs) to the priests in the temples. Motolinfa himself (1971: 63) mentions only the sacrificial flaying of the woman.

In both the Codex Telleriano-Remensis (3V) and Duran’s Ancient Calendar (1971: 447-449), Ochpaniztli is discussed as a celebration of sweeping and cleaning. Juan de Tovar tells us that the ceremony honored “the household instruments used in performing womanly tasks by the goddess Toci... particularly the brooms with which the goddess swept the house of her son, the great Huitzilopochtli” (Kubler and Gibson 1951: 29).

ANALYSIS OF OCHPANIZTLI

In order to understand the Ochpaniztli ceremony better, we must analyze its components as presented in the diverse accounts. The symbolic meaning of the Toci celebration appears to have had four related aspects.

⁴Kubler and Gibson (1951: 70) suggest that the author of the Motolinfa Insert I was Andres de Olmos.

First, by weaving and selling her products in the market, the Toci impersonator enacted proper female behavior for her Aztec audience. Second, when the priestly Toci impersonator displayed herself in front of Huitzilopochtli’s temple, she may have been, as Seler (1963: 120) suggested, simulating sexual intercourse. The union of Toci, once princess of Culhuacan, and Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec patron deity, produced Centeotl, the com god (see Seler 1902-23; 1: 433; Broda 1970: 251). Ochpaniztli appears to have recreated in ceremony the historic union of the wandering Aztec band and the noble Culhuacan line, which—starting with Acamapichtli— in turn produced the line of rulers of the Aztec empire.

Third, by scattering cornmeal, by giving ritual birth—via the thigh skin—to the god of corn, and by overseeing the sowing of corn seeds by the priests and priestesses of Chicomecoatl, Toci sustained the agricultural fertility upon which Aztec subsistence was based. However, because both Duran and the author of the Codex Tudela state that Ochpaniztli was the time of a dual ceremony honoring both Toci and the corn goddess, it is possible that Toci herself originally had little to do with agricultural fertility, and that she only took on this significance when her feast was merged with another, possibly earlier, feast of Chicomecoatl. In the Codex Borbonicus, which Nicholson (n.d.) suggests may be from Culhuacan, it is the Chicomecoatl aspect of Ochpaniztli that is emphasized: Toci makes only one relatively minor appearance.

The fourth symbolic aspect of Ochpaniztli is the one that here interests us most. This aspect is manifest in the repeated mock warfare, the weapons (later replaced by brooms) carried by Toci’s attendants, the bestowal of warriors’ insignia by the ruler, the carrying of the thigh mask (or heart, according to the Tudela) to enemy lands as a kind of threat, and in Toci’s own war cries.¹ All of these clearly point to war symbolism in the Ochpaniztli ceremony.

Aztec history and myth, which tell of Toci’s origin, support such an interpretation of the ceremonial symbolism. Moreover, just as Huitzilopochtli commanded the creation of Toci, thereby instigating the Culhuacan war, so the Ochpaniztli celebrants participated in continued warfare directed by Huitzilopochtli’s earthly embodiment, the Aztec ruler. And just as Toci, “The Woman of Discord,” was created amidst warfare, so the celebrants of the Toci-related Ochpaniztli ceremony were supported by the goods acquired through warfare. This warfare brought not only captive slaves and sacrificial victims, but, more importantly, tribute in

Fig. 4 Codex Durán (1: chap. 15) illustration of Toci and Ochpaniztli.

foodstuffs and raw materials to the island-bound populace of Tenochtitlan. That the mock warfare of Ochpaniztli recalled the Culhuacan war is implied by Horcasitas and Heyden’s translation of the name moyohual icalli given by Duran as “in last remembrance of,” and by Duran’s statement that war captives at the feast of Toci were sacrificed specifically in remembrance of the Culhuacan war.

Other Aztec sacrificial ceremonies may have had similar historical origins. Broda (1970: 235) cites Duran’s statement that the gladitorial sacrifice of Tlacaxipehualiztli was instated to celebrate the Aztec victory over the Huastecs. Like Ochpaniztli, Tlacaxipehualiztli involved mock warfare, and sacrificial flaying of war captives, and the bestowal of warrior insignia by the Aztec ruler. The similarity of the two ceremonies is visually apparent in the two illustrations by Duran’s artist (1971: pls. 15, 24) (Fig. 4) that depict the patron deity on a hill above a representation of mock combat. Toci (of Ochpaniztli) and Xipe (of Tlacaxipehualiztli) are, of course, the deities most conspicuously related to flaying among the Aztecs, and in the Primeros Memoriales, they are shown carrying war shields with similar concentric circle designs (Figs. 5, 6).

CEREMONIES AND HISTORY

By placing Aztec sacrificial ceremonies in their historical contexts, we can better understand their symbolic significance. It is important to note, by way of comparison, that almost all holidays celebrated today in the Western world, from Passover to Easter, and from Thanksgiving to the Fourth of July, had such historical origins. Some—such as Veteran’s Day—mark political, specifically military, history. These function for us just as Ochpaniztli and Tlacaxipehualiztli must have functioned for the Aztecs: they glorify warfare and reaffirm the importance of giving one’s life for one’s country. That is, they reflect and reinforce the ideology of the necessity of war. As such, they strive to integrate and intensify a community involved in constant conflict.

The exact dates and symbolic messages of some such celebrations, however, have changed over time. For example, the date of Christmas, which marks the birth of a historical figure, may have been changed to replace an earlier pagan holiday, and some Christmas observances (the use of the decorated pine tree, holly, etc.) manifest antecedents in the earlier pagan feast. In a like manner, Aztec ceremonies may have been manipulated in time and significance. It can not be simply accidental that the two ceremonies with the most overt war symbolism, Ochpaniztli and Tlacaxipehualiztli, were celebrated a half-year apart. These war festivals were probably so placed as to reward and incite the warriors, and the rest of the populace, at controlled intervals of time. In addition, both Ochpaniztli and Tlacaxipehualiztli include ritual elements that appear to allude to more ancient, agriculturally based festivals.

Evidence of the combination of ancient ceremonies with more recent historical content is seen in modern Mexico as well. Bricker (1973: 113 — 118), for example, describes war symbolism in the Dance of the Warriors performed today in rural highland Chiapas. Like the Aztec Ochpaniztli ceremony, this Chiapas dance involves ritual sweeping, market visits, a female impersonator ceremonially simulating intercourse, and mock combat. Bricker suggests that the dance had antecedents in the preconquest Maya dances, such as those discussed by Diego de Landa (Tozzer 1941), but that it has been altered to include allusions to the Chiapas Caste War of 1867-1870. She notes that the female character particularly relates to native women’s participation in that war.

The process of adding historical, war-related allusions to earlier ceremonies is evident in modern Oaxaca as well. When the Spanish Catholic friars undertook the conversion of the Mexican Indians, they taught them several dance dramas. Probably the most important of these, and certainly the

one that today is most widespread in Latin America, is that of the Moors and Christians. The dance dramatizes the wars fought in Spam in the twelfth through fifteenth centuries between the Spanish Christians and the infidel Moors. It is a dance drama with a moral: good conquers evil through war waged for religious ends. It is still performed today as the friars first taught it, that is, as a mock combat recalling the historic wars. In Santa Rosa Caxtlahuaca of the Mixteca Baja of Oaxaca, the Moors and Christians dance is always performed in conjunction with an earlier, indigenous dance drama called the “Chilolos.” In Santa Rosa, then, we see ceremonies relating to a historic war combined with an earlier set of rituals in much the same manner that the mock warfare of the Aztec Ochpaniztli, recalling the war with Culhuacan, seems to have been combined with earlier rituals dealing with corn and Chicomecoatl.

Like the Moors and Christians dance drama celebrated in Mexico today, Aztec sacrificial ceremonies undoubtedly had numerous functions. One of these appears to have been to recall major historic battles, and thereby to reinforce dramatically an ideological system based on continued military expansion and a tribute economy.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bricker, Victoria

1973    Ritual Humor in Highland Chiapas. University of Texas Press,  Austin.

Broda de Casas, Johanna

1970    Tlacaxipehualiztli: A Reconstruction of an Aztec Calendar  Festival from 16th Century Sources. Revista Español de Antropología  Americana 5: I97~273-

1978 Consideraciones sobre historiografía e ideología Mexica: Las  crónicas indigenas y el estudio de los ritos y sacrificios. Estudios de  Cultura Nahuatl 13: 97-111.

Carrasco, Pedro

1971    The Peoples of Central Mexico and Their Historical Traditions.  In Handbook of Middle American Indians (Robert Wauchope, ed.) 11: 459- 473. University of Texas Press, Austin.

Caso, Alfonso

1958 The Aztecs. People of the Sun (Lowell Dunham, trans.). University  of Oklahoma Press, Norman.

Codex Borbonicus

1974    Codex Borbonicus. Bibliotheque de l'Assembler Nationale, Paris (Y  120) (Karl Anton Nowotny and Jacqueline de Durand-Forest, eds.). Co- dices Selecti, vol. 44. Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, Graz.

Codex Boturini

1944 Tira de la Peregrinación Mexica. Librería Echaníz, México.

Codex Chimalpopoca

1975    Códice Chimalpopoca, Anales de Cuauhtitlan y Leyenda de los Soles  (Primo Feliciano Velazquez, trans.) Instituto de Investigaciones  Históricas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico.

Codex Magliabechiano

1970 Codex Magliabechiano. CL. XIII. 3 (B.R. 232), Biblioteca Nazionale  Centrale di Firenze (Ferdinand Anders, ed.). Codices Selecti, vol. 23.  Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, Graz.

Codex Mendoza

1938 Codex Mendoza. The Mexican Manuscript Known as the Collection of  Mendoza and Preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (James Cooper  Clark, trans. and ed.). 3 vols. Waterlow & Sons, London.

Codex Telleriano-Remensis

1899 Codex Telleriano-Remensis. Manuscrit mexicain du cabinet de Ch.-M.  Le Tellier, archeveque de Reims a la Bibliothéque Nationale (E. T. Hamy,  ed.). Paris. 

Codex Tudela

1980 Codice Tudela (José Tudela de la Orden, ed.). Ediciones Cultura  Hispánica, Madrid.

Crónica Mexicayotl

1975 Crónica Mexicayotl, By Fernando Alvarado Tezozomoc (Adrian  Leon, trans.) Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, Universidad  Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico.

Davies, Nigel

1973 The Aztecs, A History. Macmillan, London.

Durán, Diego

1964 The Aztecs, The History of the Indies of New Spain (Doris Heyden  and Fernando Horcasitas, trans. and ed.). Orion Press, New York.

1971 Book of the Gods and Rites, and The Ancient Calendar (Fernando  Horcasitas and Doris Heyden, trans. and ed.). University of Oklahoma  Press, Norman.

Garibay K., Angel Ma.

1948 Relación breve de las fiestas de los dioses por Fray Bernardino de  Sahagún. Tlalocan 2 (4): 289-320.

Kubler, George, and Charles Gibson

1951 The Tovar Calendar. Memoirs of the Connecticut Academy of Arts  and Sciences 11. Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences and Yale  University Press, New Haven.

Motolinía, or Toribio de Benavente

1971 Memoriales o libro de las cosas de la Nueva España y los naturales de  ella (Edmundo O’Gorman, ed.). Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas,  Universidad Nacional Autonóma de México, Mexico.

Nicholson, Henry B,

n.d. The Provenience of the Codex Borbonicus: An Hypothesis. Paper  presented at the 29th International Congress of Americanists, Lima,  1970.

Phillips, Henry

1884 Notes upon the Codex Ramirez with a translation of the same.  Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 21: 616—651.  Philadelphia.

Primeros Memoriales

1905-07 Fray Bernardino de Sahagún: Historia de las cosas de Nueva España  (Francisco del Paso y Troncoso, trans. and ed.). 4 vols. Hauser y Menet,  Madrid.

Sahagún, Bernardino de

1951-70 Florentine Codex (Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble,  trans. and ed.). 12 vols. The School of American Research and The  University of Utah, Santa Fe.

1975    Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España (Angel Ma. Garibay  K., ed.). Editorial Porrúa, Mexico.

Seler, Eduard

1902—23 Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur amerikanischen Sprach- und  Altertum-skunde. 5 vols. Berlin.

1963 Comentarios al Códice Borgia. 3 vols. Fondo de Cultura Económica,  Mexico and Buenos Aires.

Sullivan, Thelma

1976    The Mask of Itztlacoliuhqui. Actas del XLI Congreso Internacional  de Americanistas 2: 252—262. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e  Historia, Mexico.

Torquemada,Juan de

1969 Monarquia indidiana. 2 vols. Editorial Porrúa, Mexico.

Tozzer, Alfred Marston

1941 Landa’s Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan: A Translation. Papers of  the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard  University 18. Cambridge.

Wicke, Charles

1976 Once More Around the Tizoc Stone: A Reconsideration. Actas del  XLI Congreso International de Americanistas 2: 209-222. Instituto Nacional  de Antropología e Historia, Mexico.

¹

Kirckhoff noted that brooms and sweeping were analogous to war among the Maya (cited by Broda 1970: 215).

Overview: Mesoamerican Human Sacrifice in Evolutionary Perspective

ARTHUR A. DEMAREST

VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY

A phenomenon as complex and enigmatic as Precolumbian human sacrifice can only be explored through application of the full range of theories and methodologies available to contemporary anthropology. So it is appropriate that the team of scholars at this conference has assaulted the topic from every possible perspective. Iconography, ethnohistory, costume, hieroglyphs, cross-cultural comparison, and “dirt” archaeology have been utilized by the conference participants in their attempts to shed some light on this controversial subject. The results are impressive. Each scholar has applied his or her unique method to illuminate a specific aspect of human sacrifice. In the process, both the breadth and depth of Mesoamerican scholarship are beautifully displayed.

To anthropologists concerned with culture process and evolutionary theory, it is the elements of more general significance in such studies that are of greatest interest. The goal of evolutionists is to understand the causal forces in developmental trajectories, not merely specific aspects of ancient institutions. With settlement patterns or subsistence strategies, the evolutionary significance or causal implications often are quite evident. However, religious ritual and ideology are much more difficult to relate to historical trajectories, both because of the complexity of these phenomena and the underdevelopment of theory adequate to deal with them. In the case of these studies, the very sophistication of the scholarship also sometimes distracts the reader from the stated or implied functional or causal interpretations of human sacrifice.

Nonetheless, by examining the historical framework of Mesoamerican human sacrifice, it should be possible to gain insights into the broader implications of the specific researches of the conference participants. In turn, by placing these regional and temporal variants of sacrifice in this

developmental context, we can address the question of the role of human sacrifice in general Mesoamerican cultural evolution.

HUMAN SACRIFICE IN THE CLASSIC PERIOD

Clearly, from the earliest periods (e.g. MacNeish 1962: 8-9) and in every region, human sacrifice was a fundamental element of Mesoamerican culture. The contributions of Scheie and of Robicsek and Hales demonstrate the pervasive presence of human sacrifice among the Classic Maya. Their research indicates that Maya human sacrifice can only be understood in terms of a broader grammar of elite ritual behavior. It is this social and political context that defines the uniquely Classic Maya version of sacrifice and indicates its historical importance. Similarly, Wilkerson documents for the Classic period of Veracruz a distinct variant of human sacrifice embedded in its own institutional context as an element of the ballgame cult that dominated Tajin society.

These studies and other recent scholarship negate earlier visions of the peaceful, gentle Classic period society. In the Maya case, raiding parties, captive-taking, and sacrifice were obviously endemic to Maya society, and, more importantly, they were critical to status reinforcement and political power. Wilkerson shows that Tajin ballcourt-related sacrifice also functioned as a “reaffirmation of leadership” and so was central to Classic Veracruz political life, as well as to its rituals.

The role of Classic period sacrifice in the legitimation of power is reflected in every aspect of its appearance in the archaeological record. In the Maya case, human sacrifice was merely one of a set of related ritual acts (captive-taking, auto-sacrifice, etc.) expected of a proper leader. As is clear from the glyphs, iconography, and the symbolism presented by Scheie, and Robiscek and Hales, Classic Maya human sacrifice was both a legitimation and a sanctification of political power. The true Maya lord expressed his political dominance through the taking of captives but achieved the sacralization of that dominance only by the sacrificing of those captives—an acknowledgement of the culture’s ideological context and its limitations on his authority. In Classic Veracruz the situation was perfectly parallel; only the specific nature of the ideological context (the greater importance of the ballcourt cult) reflects regional variation.

While the scale of Classic period human sacrifice, captive-taking, and related activities was very small, we should not dismiss their developmental significance. As I have argued elsewhere concerning Maya warfare (Demarest 1978; cf. Adams and Hammond 1982: 507—509), a small scale for such activities is not incompatible with models that emphasize their

importance for cultural evolution. In the case of lowland Classic Maya warfare, while it was usually limited to small raids, such warfare was nevertheless a crucial factor in the gradual development of state or protostate political organization. Unrestricted, large-scale, and widespread warfare (e.g. Webster 1976, 1977; Ball 1977) is not the only form of conflict that has great implications. In a slow, deviation-amplifying, developmental trajectory small-scale warfare can play a critical role in the gradual increase in the power of chiefs. We can apply this same argument to human sacrifice in the Classic period. I agree with Soustelle’s observation in his introductory essay that the scale and emphasis of human sacrifice in the Classic period seems relatively small from a Late Postclassic perspective (see below). Still, as with the warfare with which it was associated,

Classic period human sacrifice can be considered one of several important factors contributing to the gradual nucleation of power in the lowland chiefdoms and states.

In indicating that the human sacrifice and raiding complexes of the Classic period had an effect on cultural evolution, I would caution against ignoring the fundamental and critical shifts in the nature and importance of sacrifice through time. In the past two decades, scholars like Michael and William Coe, Tatiana Proskouriakoff, and Dennis Puleston dismantled J. Eric S. Thompson’s long-standing vision of the Maya as a theocratic, peaceful, isolated, and nonurban society with a simple economic base. The discovery of urbanism at early centers like Tikal and El Mirador, fortifications at Becan, intensive agricultural systems, and grisly decapitation rituals have shattered the ancient conceptions. Some of the essays here confirm the more volatile and violent nature of Classic period societies. However, two decades have passed, and we cannot continue to be content with celebrating the death of the old model. Indeed, in terms of both warfare and human sacrifice we have perhaps overreacted to the discovery of their prevalence in the Classic period. As seen in the essays of Soustelle and Edmonson in this volume, we cannot overlook the fundamental differences that remain between manifestations of human sacrifice in the Classic and Postclassic, as well as between Central Mexico and the Maya area. Indeed, it is precisely the plotting of such shifts in institutions over time and space that generates the basis for evolutionary interpretations.

While accepting the new view of the warlike nature of Classic period states, we must explain the staggering differences that remain in tone and scale between the Late Postclassic solar/warfare/sacrifice complexes and the individualistic, prestige-reinforcing rituals of the Classic period. Even given recent evidence such as scenes of violent warfare in the Cacaxtla and Puuc murals and some group sacrifices in Classic contexts (Norman Ham-

Arthur Demurest

mond, Richard Adams, personal communications), the Classic period manifestations of warfare and sacrifice are distinctly different from the later cults. The earlier cults described by Scheie and Wilkerson emphasize the individual sacrificial act. As Wilkerson concludes for the Gulf Coast area “the evidence prior to the Late Classic suggests individual sacrifice, while the later Classic and Postclassic data indicate rituals of multiple sacrifice” (see page 129, this volume). Such descriptions of Classic sacrifice are dwarfed when one recalls the horrendous mass sacrifices of the Aztec period.

But of greater importance than the change in scale, is the gradual shift in attitude and emphasis from the Early Classic to the Late Postclassic, as well as from the Maya east to the Nahua west. Edmonson’s meticulous review of references to human sacrifice in the Chilam Balam implies that the Maya were very reluctant, if not embarrassed, to discuss such rituals. As Edmonson summarizes, “almost all apparent references to human sacrifice... are figurative, and correspondingly problematic” (see page 94, this volume). Later he notes that in the Chilam Balam “we have no circumstantial description of the manner in which sacrificial rites were conducted” (see page 96, this volume). Similarly, in the Classic period Scheie must use a very indirect argument to interpret some iconography and glyphs as related to human sacrifice. Hales and Robicsek must rely heavily on Postclassic sources such as Landa even to discuss Classic period heart sacrifice (running considerable risk of disjunction between earlier forms and later meanings). Contrast this reticence with our detailed descriptions and representations of the Late Postclassic “big-budget” sacrificial spectacles with casts of thousands of victims and foreign leaders invited as guests of the Aztec producers.

These differences are not merely matters of style; they reflect the gradual, but fundamental, transformation of sacrificial cults that occurred in Central Mexico between the Early Classic and the Late Postclassic periods. The changes in this institution reflect, and in turn affected, the overall evolution of Mesoamerican polities.

THE POSTCLASSIC TRANSITION

From the Late Classic to the beginning of the Late Postclassic periods (c. A.D. 700—1400) there was a gradual but profound change in the nature and political role of cults of human sacrifice. As argued above, in the Classic period and earlier, human sacrifice and the small raids that provided victims had a significant role in the evolution of political power—  the role of legitimation of authority. As Scheie has shown, Classic Maya

human sacrifice was critical for heir designation (see page 44, this volume) and for other aspects of the legitimation of the individual power of a specific Maya ruler. Note especially Scheie’s comments on name glyphs in Maya sacrificial scenes:

Mayanists have long debated the purpose of sacrificial scenes and the identification of  captives as individuals or as representatives of a larger group taken militarily and  politically in battle. With rare exception, the Emblem Glyph of captives, is not recorded  nor is the place of battle and conquest named. ... it must be assumed that the rarity of  place identification was deliberate and that the origin of the captive was not  important...However, whereas the place of origin was not important in the Classic period,  the name of the individual captured was important. The names of captives are not only  recorded in capture statements, but the listing of captives in royal appellatives was  frequent and widespread.

Thus, in general, prior to the end of the Classic period, sacrifice was a rite focused on an individual, a single victim sacrificed by a specific lord.

By the Postclassic period the gradual feedback between political development and its legitimation in religious institutions, including human sacrifice, had gradually reached a qualitatively different level. Human sacrifice was no longer focused upon the legitimation of the individual ruler through his sacrifice of a captive. It had become an institution that legitimated states themselves. It did not merely sanctify the ruler or even the office he held: it sanctioned and legitimated the polity as a whole. For in the Postclassic world the arena had shifted. The savage competition was not merely between individuals vying for power and a justifiable claim to the throne; it was now a global struggle between states and even alliances. Human sacrifice had become an element in these grander, more impersonal struggles. The depersonalization of Postclassic sacrifice and its magnification in scale can both be understood in the context of this higher level of political competition.

From the disintegration of the Teotihuacan polity onward, Central Mexico became an increasingly Darwinian political langscape. Initially, the collapse of Teotihuacan appears to have been followed by struggles between (and amalgamations of) traditional Valley dwellers and less-fully “Mesoamericanized” Chichimec intruders from the north and west. The intensification of military competition was paralleled by an ideological struggle that affected all aspects of religion and political identity. One element in this ideological warfare was a concern with cultural identity, as leaders sought to give their polities both a claim to a Mesoamerican identity and a pride in their vigorous Chichimec roots. This concern with a legitimating ancestry probably received special emphasis within the Toltec

tribute state that ruled over the northern Valley of Mexico about A.d. 950-1200. Whatever its specific nature, the Toltec polity was to become the archetypal Postclassic state, an amalgamation of peoples with an ancient Mesoamerican past together with northern Chichimeca. This state’s murky ethnohistorical legacy provides little secure historical information (see Nicholson 1978; Davies 1977, 1980). However, it has left us a superb (and probably not unconscious) parable for the Postclassic shift in ideology, human sacrifice, and militarism—the Quetzalcoatl legends.

The Quetzalcoatl legends, in all their varying forms, exemplify the Postclassic ambivalence toward both ethnic ancestry and the accelerating cults of human sacrifice. Quetzalcoatl himself embodies the Postclassic search for ethnic identity since he was the leader of the quasi-Chichimec polity, yet had his closest personal associations with the Nonoalca, Olmeca, and more established Mesoamerican peoples. The Postclassic ambivalence toward human sacrifice is allegorically presented in the versions of the Quetzalcoatl legend that portray him as an idealistic and priestly ruler, an advocate of peaceful policies and an opponent of human sacrifice. In the end of these tales the warlike faction prevails, and Quetzalcoatl´s defeat and flight symbolize the irreversible direction of Postclassic militarism.

The very existence of such legends implies that the intensification of military competition and the cults of human sacrifice were somewhat alarming even to Mesoamerican peoples themselves. Once again one sees the Postclassic ambivalence toward ethnicity, warfare, and even the cults that were central to state ideologies. This ambivalence resulted from the dynamic imbalance that was characteristic of Postclassic Mesoamerica, as states struggled to unify diverse ethnic groups through a combination of military strength and ideological reinforcement. The failure of their initial attempts can be seen in the disintegration of the Toltec alliance at about A.D. 1200.

The competing regional polities of the Late Postclassic period inherited the unresolved contradictions of the Toltec epoch. Militarism increased as did all other aspects of inter-polity competition. These included not only such factors as agricultural intensification and the manipulation of political alliances but, of equal importance, the ideological competition. This ideological struggle has left innumerable scars on the ethnohistorical record: dubious migration histories, contradictory regional chronologies, unconvincing dynastic lists, and patron deities bluntly forced into the complex Central Mexican pantheons. Through the manipulation of religion, history, and chronology, polity leaders tried to create prestigious quasi-Toltec ancestries for their states and a sanctified group identity for its members.

Brown’s analysis of the Ochpaniztli ritual, though set in a later Mexica context, exemplifies this manipulation of ideology and history. The sacrificial rite of Ochpaniztli functioned to reinforce the political identity of its participants—a political identity that was defined in militaristic, i.e. competitive, terms. As Soustelle notes, such an interpretation does not contradict the other meanings and functions of this ritual. But from a diachronic, developmental perspective the propagandists role of the ritual identified by Brown is the one of greatest evolutionary significance.

Religious institutions were also critical elements in the inter-polity struggle as states developed their own patron deities, unique variants of religious cults, and, thus, ideological distinction for their own specific identities as polities. Anawalt in her study in this volume, and in other similar researches, has used such specific regional ideological distinctions— as reflected in clothing and ritual c'ostume—to trace migrations, ascertain the origins of specific deities and cults, and map the variability of the Postclassic world. Thus, the political and ethnic units of the Postclassic (now largely obscured) may eventually be indirectly plotted through their variable ideological manifestations. Because one of their goals was the legitimation of power and the aggrandizement of the state, such religious distinctions are more likely to have been presented in media more accessible to direct interpretation such as sculptural iconography, pictographic codices, or Conquest period public rituals. Anawalt’s studies of the costumes associated with sacrificial ritual confirm the efficacy of such an indirect approach.

Nonetheless, even in the Postclassic it is important to remember that the patterns revealed and the processes that created them are also political and economic in nature. Driven by ecological forces such as those of “economic symbiosis” and localized demographic pressure, regional polities competed for resources and labor through military force. Yet in an epoch with equivalent and simple technologies and strategies, military superiority translates into the ability to raise large armies and to motivate them, i.e. ideology. Thus the Postclassic rise of depersonalized cults of multiple human sacrifices reflects these political struggles. The role of human sacrifice was still one of religious reinforcement and ideological legitimation. The differences in the scale of human sacrifice between the earlier Classic and the later epi-Classic and Postclassic were due to the higher order of political evolution and competition; macro-states and regional alliances, rather than individual or lineage factions, were struggling for power.

Despite their many and varied attempts, none of the competing military states of Central Mexico was able to pull together the centrifugal economic, political, and ideological forces of the Postclassic world. None,

that is, until the adaptations of the least prestigious of their number, the hated and scorned Mexica Aztec.

THE MEXICA TRANSFORMATION

We have seen that in the Classic period and earlier the principal political role of human sacrifice was its legitimation and sanctification of individual leadership and personal power. In the epi-Classic and Postclassic this legitimating role continued but was elevated to the higher plane of interpolity and regional competition. All aspects of ideology, but especially the specifically militaristic cults of human sacrifice, became social weapons justifying and, to a growing extent, even motivating inter-state competition. It was a shift toward this last function that characterized the Mexica Aztec’s unique contribution to the development of Mesoamerican cults of human sacrifice and its movement to an even higher level of evolutionary impact.

By the late fourteenth century the balkanized political environment of Central Mexico had become a perpetual battleground of the militant Nahua polities. The ideological struggle discussed above continued to intensify with the forming and reforming of alliances and the linking of interethnic dynastic ties. Each new war, alliance, or royal marriage required ideological sanction as states competed to legitimate their claim to be the rightful heir of the (by then legendary) Toltec state. Needless to say, ecological pressures and economic goals were causally intertwined with the political and ideological struggles, as inter-polity conflict built to a climax in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. At that time major confederations of centers were struggling for supremacy, most notably the Tepanec alliance centered in the west of the Valley of Mexico at Azcapotzalco and the older Acolhua confederacy in the east. Caught between the struggles of such super powers, smaller polities survived through varying and resourceful strategies. Southern freshwater lake centers like Xochimilco and Chaleo relied upon their intensive lake-bed chinampa agriculture as a competitive edge. Other centers, like Culhuacan, stressed certain ideological and political advantages; the Culhua dynasties, notable for their noble Toltec ancestry, survived by lending their prestige to threatening polities through marriage alliances. In the first few decades of the fifteenth century the Mexica developed a unique competitive strategy, one that not only assured their survival but led to their supremacy in Mesoamerica.

There were many elements in the complex and interrelated set of institutions responsible for the Mexica imperial juggernaut. Under the tutelage

Sacrifice in Evolutionary Perspective of their Tepanec allies and overlords, the Mexica developed the standard set of Postclassic political, military, and economic institutions and survived through a series of adaptations. As tributaries of the Tepanec they placed an increasing emphasis on warfare and its economic product, tribute. This militarization caused an elaboration of the office of tlatoani and a gradual augmentation of its power at the expense of the calpullin and other traditional Mexica institutions. The Mexica also intensified their agricultural and mercantile activities and formed important political alliances as well. However, basically there was nothing particularly original of competitive advantage in the Mexica economic or political institutions that could account for their sudden rise to power in the early fifteenth century. The original and unique adaptation of the Mexica to their cultural environment was their modification and manipulation of traditional Mesoamerican religious ideology—particularly their reworking of the mythology of human sacrifice. This reworking of the sacrificial cult did not merely intensify its scale, it further shifted its causal role from one of legitimating, and thus maintaining the power of leaders or states, to a role of actively motivating (and eventually necessitating) open-ended expansionism.

Elsewhere, I have detailed and discussed the specific nature and evolutionary effects of this “ideological adaptation” of the Mexica Aztec (Demarest n.d.; Demarest and Conrad 1983, n.d.; Conrad and Demarest n.d.). Brown, Soustelle, and Matos Moctezuma refer to aspects of this unique solar/warfare/sacrifice complex that formed the central cult of the Mexica state. The Mexica adaptation was preceded by more typical ideological shifts: the unconvincing elaboration of migration myths giving them quasi-Toltec associations, the elevation of their patron deity into a major (and militaristic) member of the pantheon, and a general “solariza-tion” of state religion (cf. Demarest 1981). But it was only at the time of the Tepanec war and Itzcoatl’s ascendancy that the Mexica profoundly transformed their ideological system by combining these other changes with a new nationalistic and expansionistic vision of cults of human sacrifice. This vision linked the sacrificial cult with the ancient mythology of the sun’s constant struggle with the forces of darkness:

Convinced that in order to avoid the final cataclysm it was necessary to fortify the sun,  they undertook for themselves the mission of furnishing it with the vital energy found  only in the precious liquid which keeps man alive. Sacrifice and ceremonial warfare,  which was the principal manner of obtaining victims for all sacrificial rites, were their  central activities and the very core of their personal, social, military, religious, and  national life. This mystical vision of the cult of Huitzilopochtli transformed the Aztecs  into great warriors, into “the people of the sun”. (León-Portilla 1963: 61)

Thus, the sun, deliberately confounded with Huitzilopochtli by imperial mythographers, could only survive by being fed the hearts and blood of sacrificial victims captured in war. The Mexica had become the agents of the sun, not only justifying their tireless militarism, but demanding it, as the state’s priests reminded their citizenry:

You have been sent into warfare. War is your desert, your task. You shall give  drink, nourishment, food to the Sun and to the Earth. (Sahagún 1950-69, bk. 6: 171)

The details of Mexica sacrificial cosmology have been dramatically presented by Caso (1945, 1953), León-Portilla (1963), Soustelle (1961: chap. 3), and others. Their interpretations have been confirmed by evidence from sculptural iconography (Townsend 1979, 1982; Nicholson 1971) and by Matos Moctezuma's discoveries in the Templo Mayor reported here. Of particular significance is the now overwhelming evidence that the reworking of traditional Postclassic concepts into the Mexica central cult and the propagation of this new dogma in sculpture, poetry, and liturgy were conscious changes deliberately instituted by the militant cadre of leaders who took control of the Mexica state during the Tepanec war.

The political basis for this ideological reformation has been discussed in a series of recent ethnohistorical and art-historical studies (e.g. Leon-Portilla 1958, 1960; Townsend 1979; Davies 1973; Demarest and Conrad 1983; Brotherston 1974). It is hardly coincidental that this new vision of the universe required the expansionism that was the preferred policy of the militaristic faction. It was this faction that took control of the state in 1427—burning the codices that recorded earlier versions of Mexica history and mythology. Nor is it merely fortuitous that the ceaseless militarism demanded by the hungry warrior-sun also provided a key pillar of Mexica economics—tribute. Indeed, as Berdan’s studies (1976, n.d.) of Mexica economics have shown, even the distinct trade and market sectors of their economy were interdependent with the tribute system and the warfare that generated it. Thus, their apocalyptic vision of the universe drove the Mexica armies ever outward, taking and sacrificing captives to save the world from perpetual darkness, while at the same time feeding the economic needs of the expanding empire and the boundless ambitions of its leaders.

From a developmental perspective the ideological changes involved in the Mexica’s nationalized version of human sacrifice were dramatic and fairly rapid adjustments to their specific historical circumstances. These changes gave the institutions of human sacrifice an even more crucial role in Mesoamerican political evolution. They did not merely justify and legitimate political power or militarism, they motivated it with the wild

fanaticism that was the key to victory in Precolumbian warfare. Once again the context and role of the sacrificial cult had been elevated into a higher causal role, one which helped to produce Mesoamerica’s greatest macro-state, the Mexica-dominated “Triple Alliance” hegemony known as the Aztec Empire.

HUMAN SACRIFICE AND CAUSALITY IN MESOAMERICAN CULTURAL EVOLUTION

Viewed from a broad perspective the Mexica’s reworkings of the sacrificial cult were not such unpredictable and unprecedented changes. They represented the logical culmination of a long and gradual evolution of this religious institution. The role of sacrifice shifted through time from the Early Classic Maya’s use of sacrifice to justify the individual’s right to rule, to the Postclassic legitimation of competing states, to the active motivation of the Mexica’s untiring expansionism. But the shift from the initial role of personal legitimation to the final one of mass motivation is merely a question of scale and intensity. The concept of legitimation usually implies that the principal sources of power are economic and political and that the ideology operates after the fact to justify that power. Such a causal and chronological ordering for the effects of the various subsystems of society (economic, political, ideological) is somewhat idealized, if not artificial, even for the Classic period. Certainly by the Postclassic it is unreasonable to assign such a passive role for legitimating ideologies like the sacrificial cult. By Toltec times, if not earlier, religious ideology did not merely sanctify power; it was itself an active source of power, a weapon brutally wielded by skillful leaders in the savage inter-state struggles of the Postclassic.

The Mexica leaders were particularly conscious of the efficacy of this ideological weapon and they merely elevated its role to a central one in state policy. In so doing, however, they institutionalized the changes in cosmology and ritual involved in their central war-sacrifice cult. As a result these ideological elements became forces unto themselves, no longer fully controlled by leadership. Indeed, the failure of Moctezuma II´s attempts to shift Mexica policy from expansionism to consolidation can be directly attributed to the irreversibility of this imperial ideology (Conrad and Demarest n.d.; chap. 2). By the early sixteenth century, leaders could tamper with the central cult only at considerable risk of alienating the populace, weakening the fanaticism of their warriors, and confronting the power of classes and interest groups (e.g., the pipiltin and the pochteca) who were economically dependent on the limitless expansionism demanded by the ideology of the central cult.

Thus, in a truly diachronic model the role of human sacrifice in culture change must be seen as a dynamic one, not only in the sense that the institution was changing along with other aspects of culture, but also that the structure of its relationship with other causal forces was evolving. Therefore, it was, in specific periods and places, more of an active force in culture change than a passive legitimation or reflection of such evolution. In this sense it is a mistake to assign a set function and a given level of importance in cultural dynamics to human sacrifice, or to any other aspect of ideology. The study of cultural evolution does not merely entail the cataloguing of sequential, increasingly complex items and institutions. It must focus on the shifting structure of society and the ways in which this restructuring both reflected development and generated further culture change.

Unfortunately, when it comes to religious behavior or institutions, anthropologists and archaeologists interested in cultural evolution invariably slip into a kind of static functionalism which assigns ideology a passive role, or no role at all, in culture change. Even those few anthropologists who have concerned themselves with Mesoamerican religion and the sacrificial cult have restricted it to the traditional place of passive legitimation of authority. Kurtz’s recent analysis of Aztec cultural evolution exemplifies this tendency:

It was suggested that the Aztec state represented an inchoate incorporative state (Cohen  1969), that is one which has not usurped the power of local centers of potential  autonomy within its national territory and thus, is not very legitimate. One way for a state  to overcome inchoatcy is to acquire legitimacy, or the support of the polity, as quickly as  possible. ... At the core of this process is the establishment of authority based upon law. ...  In addition, the state obtains religious justification for the social order, values, and  ideology it is trying to develop from state affiliated religious institutions and personnel.  (Kurtz 1978: 85)

Kurtz’s reconstruction, like most treatments of Mesoamerican religion, unconsciously shifts from functionalist to historical explanations. The inchoate, loosely-structured nature of the Aztec Triple Alliance empire is introduced as a given, and the ideology is assumed to have been designed after the fact to carry out its legitimating function. This a priori structuring ignores the known order of Mexica history, now well documented from ethnohistorical studies of the Tepanec and early imperial period. While political legitimation does appear to have been the intent of the reforms of state religion, this was far from the only effect of the reworking of the sacrificial rituals and cosmology. Specifically, the “inchoate” decentralized form of the Triple Alliance empire cannot be seen as the cause of the leaders’ modifications of ideology, since the empire had scarcely begun its expansion at the time of the religious reforms.

In fact, the elaboration of the central solar sacrificial cult was one of the major factors involved in driving the expansion, forming the empire, and giving it its loose-knit structure. Mexica expansionism was driven by both the desire for tribute and the demand for captives for the sacrificial cult. These goals are satisfied most easily and quickly by a far-flung, loose, and rapidly expanding hegemony. Even the fact that such an “inchoate” structure encouraged frequent revolts was acceptable to Mexica leadership since rebellions and their military suppression furnished the captives needed to feed the hungry sun (and to maintain the logic and efficacy of the imperial mythology). Thus, the historical order and the causal argument must be reversed: the sacrificial ideology did not merely legitimate the structure of the Mexica empire, it actually helped to generate the empire itself and to define its specific nature.

By this argument I do not mean to imply that all functionalist analyses are to be avoided. Indeed, such interpretations are necessary initial elements in constructing any diachronic analysis. For Mesoamerican human sacrifice, we have in this volume a collection of excellent studies with implicit or explicit functionalist elements. Scheie and Wilkerson have shown how the sacrificial cult functioned to legitimate and sacralize the authority of rulers in the Classic period. Brown stresses the function of the Ochpanitzli ritual in legitimation and reinforcement of national historical identity, while Soustelle reminds us that the same ritual served to encourage fertility and reproductivity. Both are clearly correct in noting these functions and other specific sacrificial ceremonies had yet different purposes. For example, the Tlaxcalipeualiztli mass sacrifice ceremonies were believed by the chronicler Duran to be displays to intimidate the Mexica’s tributaries and potential enemies (Duran 1967, 2: 77; cf. Kurtz 1978; Bray 1978). Davies in his essay here follows a totally different, cross-cultural approach to deriving functions. He follows the structuralists and functionalists in stressing the psychological and social role of sacrifice. With a Durkheimian logic, Davies concludes that human sacrifice is “an act of propitiation that serves to unite the community by a religious rite in which, through the medium of the victim’s death, man momentarily becomes God, and God becomes man” (see page 224, this volume). Even Matos Moctezuma’s report of recent excavation results at the Templo Mayor cleverly uses an implicit functionalist argument to structure his presentation of the finds in traditional Marxist terms: the cult objects and their rituals are seen as “phenomena” that both reflected and functioned to reinforce the “essence” of the economic order.

Such functionalist views of human sacrifice provide insights into the nature of the institution at specific points in time. They are also a source of

hypotheses to be tested against historical evidence on the origins and development of human sacrifice and of the ideologies in which it was embedded. However, arguments about function should not be considered historical or developmental explanations in themselves, in the absence of any actual chronological ordering. Nor should an a priori role be assigned to any subsystem or institution. As Diener et al. have cogently argued, such explanations are logically invalid:

A specific fallacious form of explanation which has plagued functional-ecological  investigation in anthropology, as it plagued classical functionalism before it, involves the  improper accounting for historical origins by reference to observed or assumed functions.  The explanation of origins in terms of functions is formally invalid because it involves an  affirmation of the consequent. (Diener et al. 1978: 223)

Unfortunately, a number of popular models of the role and development of human sacrifice have involved just this type of a priori assignment of ordering. In the case of Kurtz’s analysis, we have seen that this implicit imposition of a predetermined sequence and role can result in an inversion of the true historical order and consequently the true direction of causality.

In the currently dominant cultural materialist evolutionary models, the imposed chronological order is invariably selected so as to impose a parallel causal order: one in which “economic infrastructure” determines the form of the ideological system. Thus, traits like human sacrifice are viewed to be either unimportant reflections or by-products of economics and technology or are themselves disguised ecological adaptations. The dogma of technoeconomic determinism precludes any meaningful objective historical study of the role of ideology in cultural evolution, since its role is predetermined as epiphenomenal. Cultural materialism’s most eloquent spokesman, Leslie White, made this fact unmistakably clear:

The technological factor is the basic one; all others are dependent upon it. Furthermore,  the technological factor determines, in a general way at least, the form and content of the  social, philosophic, and sentimental sectors. (White 1959: 19)

... we set forth a theory of technological determination of cultural systems. Social systems  and ideologies were seen as functions of technological systems. (White 1959: 273)

The philosophy, or ideological component, of every culture thus far is made up of  naturalistic and supernaturalistic elements. The role of each in any given situation is  determined by the underlying technology. (White 1959: 23)

Needless to say, this predetermined result does not correspond with the evidence presented here concerning Mesoamerican human sacrifice. It is clear that sacrifice and the state religions that incorporated it were critical causal forces not only in the legitimation of power, but (for at least the

Postclassic period) in the actual generation of that power. Finally, the Aztec period sacrificial cosmology and the conflict it generated formed a major component of both the economic and political systems themselves.

Faced with the staggering scale and obvious economic impact of Aztec period sacrifice, cultural materialists have resorted to the alternative explanatory strategy: if it was important, then it cannot be a religious or even political phenomenon, it must be a disguised ecological adaptation. For example, Cook (1946) suggested that the warfare/sacrifice complex was actually a means of population control, relieving demographic pressure by generating high casualties. However, it has been shown that the warfare complex would not have relieved population pressure but rather could have exacerbated it. Aztec warfare and sacrifice mostly killed young men, these farming societies’ prime producers, while women were seldom slain. Recall that women’s generative capacity is little reduced by a reduction of males in a polygamous society. As Harris (1977: 107) concluded, “if the Aztecs were intent upon cutting back on the rate of population growth, they would have concentrated on sacrificing maidens instead of men.” Furthermore, the geographical parameters of the model do not make sense. Due to the rapid urbanization by immigration of the central Valley of Mexico (Calnek 1976: 288-290), population pressure was primarily a problem in the major lake cities. As Berdan has noted (n.d.: 304), this negates Cook’s hypothesis:

If human sacrifice were used as a population control measure (conscious or not), it could  not have been too effective... Increasing human sacrifices tended to depopulate outlying  provincial areas more than the dense urban areas; it reduced the number of producers  while changing little the population structure of the urban consumers.

Perhaps the most publicized, but ultimately least convincing, of the ecological/functionalist theories on Mesoamerican sacrifice was that of Michael Harner (1977a, 1977b) and Marvin Harris (1977, 1979). They argued that the Late Postclassic peoples of Central Mexico, suffering from a drastic shortage of protein resources, resorted to a program of militarism, human sacrifice, and cannibalism in order to supply their protein needs through the consumption of human flesh. This rather extreme model has been thoroughly dismantled by a host of critics. There is no need to repeat all of their arguments here. Suffice it to say that the underlying logic of the theory has been shown to be self-contradictory by evolutionary theorists (e.g. Sahlins 1978; Oakes 1981; Conrad and Demarest n.d.: chap. 5), while the specific historical details involved have been rejected as totally inaccurate by ethnohistorians and archaeologists specializing in the region (e.g. Ortiz de Montellano 1978; Castille 1980; Conrad and Demarest n.d.: chap.

4). Finally, embarrassed fellow materialists (e.g. Price 1978; Garn 1979) have denounced the theory on the grounds that there is no evidence whatsoever for Late Postclassic protein deficiency, and that sacrifice and cannibalism would not have alleviated such shortages even if they had existed.

The rather spectacular failure of such attempts to bring Mesoamerican human sacrifice into harmony with technoeconomic determinism underscores the inescapable conclusion of all of our current evidence on this institution: that Mesoamerican human sacrifice, and the ideologies that generated it, played a major causal role in cultural evolution. As we have seen, this role did, initially, correspond with the traditional Marxist function for religion: the legitimation of political power. But the structure of causal relationships between institutions is not static, any more than is culture itself. So through time these ideological institutions took on a causal force of their own in new structural arrangements—as weapons in interpolity struggles and, ultimately, as key factors in Aztec expansionism—inseparable from the political and economic systems which they helped to define and generate.

It should be noted that such a conclusion is perfectly compatible with some of the more recent and more sophisticated versions of culture ecology, economic anthropology, and even Marxist theory. Evolutionists in all of these schools are coming to realize that ideology must be addressed as a causal force intertwined with other components of society in cultural dynamics. “Substantivist” economic anthropolgists now argue that even the economic systems themselves can only be analyzed as institutions embedded in a social, political, and ideological context (e.g. Polanyi et al. 1957; Berdan n.d.). Some structural Marxists hold that ideology must be included as a major causal factor in the study of political economy (e.g. Godelier 1977, 1978; Friedman 1974, 1975). They have become increasingly aware of numerous cases (like that of the Mexica tribute system) in which ideology and economics, religion and productive forces, are inseparable:

In this context, we see that religious ideology is not merely the superficial, phantasmic  reflection of social relations. It is an element internal to the social relations of production ... it  was a part of the internal armature of these relations of production. (Godelier 1978: 8)

Similarly, culture ecologists are now beginning to test “actor-based models” that must include religious and other volitional factors. Orlove, in a summary of recent research in cultural ecology (1980: 262), contends that: As this work progresses, materialist and idealist approaches in anthropology are likely to find more common ground through a more thorough interpretation of culture and ideology as systems which mediate between actors and environments...

Sacrifice in Evolutionary Perspective

Several scholars applying “systems theory” approaches to ecological modeling and cultural evolution have concurred with Orlove’s call for more holistic approaches incorporating ideological factors (e.g. Rodin et al. 1978; Rappaport 1978). All of these schools of analysis are beginning to broaden their interests once again to include the ideological elements of culture in studies of cultural evolution. Agreeing on little else, they concur in rejecting a “false determinism that claims to be able to explain a society in terms of one of its parts, systematically doing away with the problem of history” (Friedman 1975: 198).

In the light of this trend, a volume on ideology such as this one takes on a new significance. These explorations of the myriad manifestations of Mesoamerican human sacrifice become critical items to those interested in the historical development of New World civilization, and even for those seeking general theories of cultural evolution. No longer can evolutionists dismiss such works as scholarly, but irrelevant, esoterica—explorations of the bizarre but insignificant elements of Precolumbian culture. Now we must address this ideological data base with the same interest that we would give to studies of settlement patterns, subsistence systems, or political institutions. As holism returns to evolutionary theory, the anthropologist himself must grow in his breadth of knowledge, must become more complete as a Precolumbian scholar. The challenge is overwhelming, but exciting.

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1981    Viracocha: The Nature and Antiquity of the Andean High God.  Monographs of the Peabody Museum, No. 6. Peabody Museum Press,  Harvard University, Cambridge.

n.d. The Ideological Adaptation of the Mexica Aztec. Advanced  Seminar on Mesoamerican Archaeology, 1976 (Gordon R. Willey, ed.).  Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge.

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1983 Ideological Adaptation and the Rise of the Aztec and Inca  Empires. In Festschrift in Honor of Gordon R. Willey (Richard  Leventhal and Alan Kolata, eds.): 373-399. University of New Mexico  Press, Albuquerque.

n.d. Ideological Adaptation and Maladaptation in the Evolution of the  Inca State. In The Origins and Development of the Andean State (J.  Haas, S. Pozorski, and T. Pozorski, ed.). (In preparation.)

Diener, Paul, Donald Nonini, and Eugene Robkin

1978    The Dialectics of the Sacred Cow: Ecological Adaptation Versus  Political Appropriation in the Origins of India’s Cattle Complex.  Dialectical Anthropology 3: 221-238.

Duran, Diego

1967 Historia de las Indias de Nueva España y Islas de Tierra Firme  (Angel Maria Garibay K., ed.). 2 vols. Editorial Porrúa, Mexico.

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1974    Marxism, Structuralism and Vulgar Materialism. Man 9: 444- 469.

1975    Tribes, States, and Transformations. In Marxist Analyses and  Social Anthropology (M. Bloch, ed.): 161-202. John Wiley and Sons, New  York.

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1979    The Noneconomic Nature of Eating People. American  Anthropologist 81: 902-903.

Godelier, Maurice

1977    Perspectives in Marxist Anthropology. Cambridge University  Press, Cambridge.

1978    Economy and Religion: An Evolutionary Optical Illusion. In  The Evolution of Social Systems (J. Friedman and M. J. Rowlands, eds.): 3  — 12. Duckworth, London.

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1977a The Ecological Basis for Aztec Sacrifice. American Ethnologist 4:  117— 135

1977b The Enigma of Aztec Sacrifice. Natural History 86: 47-52.

Harris, Marvin

1977    Cannibals and Kings: The Origins of Cultures. Random House,  New York.

1979    Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for A Science of Culture.  Random House, New York.

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1978    The Legitimation of the Aztec State. In The Early State (H.  Claessen and P. Skalnik, eds.): 169-189. Mouton, The Hague.

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1958 Itzcoatl creador de una cosmovision mistico-guerrera. In Siete  ensayos sobre Cultura nahuatl: 117-143. Universidad Nacional  Autónoma de México, Mexico.

1960 The Concept of the State Among the Ancient Aztecs. Alpha  Kappa Deltan 30: 7-13.

1963 Aztec Thought and Culture. University of Oklahoma Press,  Norman.

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1962 Second Annual Report of the Tehuacan Archaelogical-Botanical  Project. Robert S. Peabody Foundation of Archaeology, Andover,  Massachusetts.

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1971 Major Sculpture in Pre-hispanic Central Mexico. In Handbook of  Middle American Indians 10 (Gordon F. Ekholm and Ignacio Bernal,  eds.): 355-445. University of Texas Press, Austin.

1978 Western Mesoamerican Native Historical Traditions and the  Chronology of the Postclassic. In Chronologies in New World  Archaeology (Clement W. Meighan and R. E. Taylor, eds.): 285-329.  Academic Press, New York.

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1981 The Epistemological Foundations of Cultural Materialism.  Dialectical Anthropology 6: 1-21.

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1978 Aztec Cannibalism: An Ecological Necessity? Science 200: 611-617.

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1980 Ecological Anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology 9: 235- 273.

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1957 Trade and Market in the'Early Empires. The Free Press, New York.

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1978 Demystification, Enriddlement, and Aztec Cannibalism: A  Materialist Rejoinder to Harner. American Ethnologist 5: 98-115.

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1978 Maladaptation in Socal Systems. In The Evolution of Social  Systems (J. Friedman and M. J. Rowlands, eds.): 49-71. Duckworth,  London.

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1978 Systems Theory in Anthropology. Current Anthropology 19: 747- 762.

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1950-69 Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain  (Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J. O. Anderson, trans.) 11 vols. School of  American Research, Santa Fe.

Sahlins, Marshall D.

1978    Culture as Protein and Profit. New York Review of Books,  November 23: 4-5—53-

Soustelle, Jacques

1961 The Daily Life of the Aztecs on the Eve of the Spanish Conquest  (Patrick O’Brien, trans.). Stanford University Press, Stanford.

Townsend, Richard F.

1979    State and Cosmos in the Art of Tenochtitlan. Dumbarton Oaks  Studies in Pre-Columbian Art & Archaeology, 20. Dumbarton Oaks,  Washington.

1982 Malinalco and the Lords of Tenochtitlan. In The Art and  Iconography of Late Post-Classic Central Mexico (Elizabeth Boone,  ed.): m-140. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington.

Webster, David L.

1976    Defensive Earthworks at Becan, Campeche, Mexico,  Implications for Maya Warfare. Middle American'Research Institute,  Publication 41. Tulane University, New Orleans.

1977    Warfare and the Evolution of Maya Civilization. In The Origins  of Maya Civilization (R. E. W. Adams, ed.): 335-372. University of New  Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

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